I grew up poor, and my family had poor hygiene habits so I didn't really brush my teeth growing up. Half of my teeth rotted away before I was 25. I was enduring cavities, complete decay, and constant pain for years before that. I also overdosed on pain meds once because of it. I had a steady diet of aspirin and or ibuprofen for years too. Most of my molars no longer had crowns, and were just exposed blackened roots and nerve. They were like that for so long, the nerves died in a few of them. By the time I got to the dentist, they had to pull a ton of the dead roots. Including my wisdom teeth. I had to endure 2 sessions with just Novocain, where they extracted 5-8 teeth in one (can't remember), and 3 in the other. The first extraction literally took 5 hours, because the dentist literally had no way of yanking them out. So he had to drill into my jaw and pry them out. He also had to use a literal dental crowbar, and I thought he was going to crack my skull open. Most of them came out in literal pieces that exploded, that I almost choked on a few times. It was that difficult. Dentist said it was the hardest thing he has ever done in his entire career. The 2nd session lasted a whole 30 min, and the guy got 3 of them out easy as fuck. (different dentist too).
I got pics of the teeth they pulled if anyone is interested.
Managed to get health benefits later to fix up the rest, and it cost upwards of 7k$ in 2012. So now I just got my front teeth and no molars to eat with. I also now have a very firm brushing schedule. I also found out due to malnourishment my teeth are somewhat softer than they are suppose to be. So I also definitely avoid soda.
