I'm old. The guy we went to as kids used absolutely no painkillers. Smell of the drill always made me nauseous. My dad, a colorful guy with his stories, said that in the Army during WWII, they just had two guys stand next to you in the dental chair to catch the fainters.
My horrible dental story starts when I cracked a tooth in half. I went to the dentist and he said I'd need a root canal. He didn't do root canals in house, so he referred me out. In the meantime, he put in a temporary crown and let me go, saying that I'd probably have some pain. He gave me a prescription for percocet, and sent me on my way. Well, the root canal wasn't able to be scheduled for over 3 weeks, but my dentist thought the temporary crown would be fine.
Fast forward a week, and I'm in a lot of pain. The whole side of my face that the crown is on is just a constant ache. It's excruciating. The only time I get any relief is when I pop a percocet, and that only lasts for a few hours. I call the dentist and tell them, and they're like "well, we told you there'd be pain. We'll increase your percocet dosage."
Fast forward another week, and it's worse. It's keeping me up at night and making it hard to work. I can't take it anymore. So, I call the dentist, explain the situation, and he agrees to see me.
I get in the chair, and the dentist starts to remove the temporary crown. As soon as he gets in there, I noticed an immediate reduction in pain. Like someone turned off a light switch. I also noticed this awful smell. I thought that perhaps I stepped in something, or the dentists had had taco bell for lunch. It never occurred to me that it was coming from my tooth. It was terrible, like rotting death and fecal matter got together and ordered Indian food. The dentist immediately announced the problem. Apparently, they hadn't gotten the tooth cleaned well enough, and then trapped bacteria inside when they put on the crown. I guess when they reproduce, they give off some kind of gas, and with nowhere for it to go, it just built up a ton of pressure resulting in a ton of pain. He rinsed me out really well, and when I spit, I can't even describe the foulness that came out.
Thankfully, he got it all on the second try, put on a new temp crown, and I had no more pain. Root canal went off without a hitch.