Asklemmy

proviso: I am not medically trained and most of what I’ve picked up has been informally through the American cannabis communities and legalization efforts

and options for dealing with pain in the US are a hot topic item – you need a medical professional that is knowledgeable about ALL the options but doctors get their licensing at the federal level, not the state level, so they risk their license to even talk about cannabis

from what I’ve stumbled across, opioids work better on acute pain (ex. fractures) and cannabinoids work better on chronic pain (ex. fibromyalgia, stress) – ie. cannabis will help with aches and tension, allowing you to get a night’s sleep – but for direct pain from the fracture, you might be stuck with NSAIDs which have their own slew of issues

I know almost nothing about the other pain systems, but Wikipedia generally has some good starting points

• cannabinoid
  • “Before the 1980s, cannabinoids were speculated to produce their physiological and behavioral effects via nonspecific interaction with cell membranes, instead of interacting with specific membrane-bound receptors. The discovery of the first cannabinoid receptors in the 1980s helped to resolve this debate. These receptors are common in animals. Two known cannabinoid receptors are termed CB~1~ and CB~2~, with mounting evidence of more. The human brain has more cannabinoid receptors than any other G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) type.”
• endocannabinoid system
  • “The Endocannabinoid System (ECS) regulates many functions of the human body. The ECS plays an important role in multiple aspects of neural functions, including the control of movement and motor coordination, learning and memory, emotion and motivation, addictive-like behavior and pain modulation, among others.”
  • CB~1~ receptor
  • CB~2~ receptor