I used to be very regular with dental visits, and have had an enormous amount of work done over the years. Then I went to my first PE owned dentist (by accident) and it was such a horrific experience I've basically avoided dentists since.
There used to be some reasonable balance between the dentist wanting to make money and wanting to build a secure custommer base/happy clients. PE dentists are just money extraction machines with little to no concern for how much pain is caused getting money out of your wallet.
(Just avoiding going to the dentist is pretty extreme tho - probably reasonable to get them looked at at least yearly?)
Same guy expects me to handle the pain of all four of my wisdom teeth being removed with literally one 12 pill vial of Vicodin. Acts like I'm doctor/pill shopping.
Reported him to my stats dental board, they get back to me with "well homeopathic remedies can't hurt you either, so we won't do anything to him!"
Dentists are the scum of reality, and their usage as traditional fronts for organized crime is done on purpose and as a trope in media it is sadly true.
Wage war on them as an economic group. They are almost as bad as chiropractors. Also a traditional occupation of corrupt state legislatures/senators.
Are narcotics normally required to handle that?
I also had my gallbladder out via laparoscopic surgery with the same as pain relief. It's possible we just don't feel pain the same.