The staggering incidence of untreated pain is a worldwide crisis.On top of this, the implementation of opiates as a frontline therapeutic strategy has heavily contributed to the current opioid abuse and overdose epidemic in the United States. Improved strategies for treating chronic pain with safer side effect profiles carry an enormous potential payoff for pain patients (Volkow & Collins, 2017).Currently, the clinical management of chronic pain remains a significant challenge given the heterogeneity of underlying causes, and the limited efficacy and/or significant detrimental side effects of many current medications. The cognate receptors for both exogenous opioids and other current pharmacological pain treatments are located not only in the known pain pathways but also in brain reward circuits and brainstem breathing pattern generators (Corder et al., 2018) Therefore, comprehensive strategies that provide substantive relief across pain types, and with reduced abuse and death liabilities, are needed (Davis et al., 2020).