RECOVERY: Tiny fish with a funny name could help with opioid crisis.

The fang blenny, a fish found in the Great Barrier Reef, has potent venom that acts the same way as opioid drugs for killing pain. It could represent a new way to look at our most effective — and problematic — pain drugs.

Why do we need new opioid drugs?

Mostly because the ones currently on the market aren’t that good. We have potent opiods that are incredibly addictive and have lots of other side effects, including constipation, dizziness, nausea and altered mental condition. Or we have weak ones that simply aren’t that helpful for deep and chronic pain.

As things stand, we can go into the lab and tinker with existing drugs, and hope we can decrease addictiveness while maintaining potency. But so far, that hasn’t exactly been very successful.

Another approach is to look to nature. Nature has had millions of years to tinker with biologically active chemicals. We don’t necessarily know where to look for these, nor have the tools to begin a search. But chemicals that have evolved to kill pain without killing you are out there somewhere — in the fang blenny fish, for example.

Faster, please.