As ambulatory surgery is gaining popularity, there is a need to facilitate earlier hospital discharge and improve postoperative pain control. As the shift is gaining from inpatient to outpatient day care surgery, the use of intravenous patient controlled analgesics and continuous epidural infusions has seen a steady decline. Multimodal analgesic regimens using non–opioid analgesics (e.g., local anesthetics, nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs, cyclooxygenase inhibitors, acetaminophen, ketamine, α 2–agonists etc) are here to stay as these opioid–sparing techniques lead to reduced nausea, vomiting, constipation, urinary retention, respiratory depression and sedation. Non–narcotic analgesic techniques coupled with local anesthesia is associated with improved quality of recovery and a pain free post operative period. Opioids are difficult to procure due to stringent anti narcotic stance of various governments due to abuse potential and anesthesiologists are opting for non narcotic adjuvants in their regional procedures the world over. A wide array of non opioid drugs are available to achieve this and it would be prudent to have a working knowledge of these newer adjuvants for daily practice