An add for the ‘Happy Dentist’.
If you feel worried or anxious about going to the dentist this guy is for you!
You set up an appointment with this guy then he sends you a ‘happy pack’ for the day your dental work is schedualed on.
Yep. The dentist sends you quality tranqualizers and other happy meds then you go in and have dental work done and get more pain medication.
:smack:
The dentist once sent me home with a Valium, to be taken the day I was scheduled for some dental surgery.
It was the first one I’d ever had. I was kinda dubious, since (being a big wuss about dentists) I wanted something more along the lines of a horse tranquilizer. I needn’t have worried, though…it made everything reaaaal nicey-nice. I haven’t had the occasion to take any since then and wouldn’t seek it out, but it definitely eased the tension that time.
Anyway…so what’s the problem? Do you prefer the hairy-chested, Steve-Martin-esque “Dremel and Craftsman” approach?
(FWIW, we have a similar guy around here whose hook is that he puts you to sleep, even for simple little stuff like drill-and-fills.)
Yeah, what’s the problem? I can take most kinds of pain well but I’m a huge wuss when someone’s poking around inside my mouth. I want a dentist like that.
So nobody sees a problem with marketing yourself on the radio as the dentist that gives away narcotics to your patients?
I don’t see a problem. Well I will be curious to see how long he stays in business since I imagine he will get hit with a bunch of addicts with fraudulent claims for dental work. Perhaps he already has a system for weeding these out?
The dentist is going to have to do a checkup and verify you have an actual need for dental work before you get to the happy pack stage, right?
The drugs probably won’t carry a person through more than 1 day so I can’t see him getting scammed too often. He’ll probably attract enough legitimate clients to handle any losses too.
I don’t think the dentist is acting unethically and it’s highly doubtful his business practices are going to create addicts.
They probably do more to promote healthy dental hygiene since they remove the fear associated with visits to the dentist. I know I would go for regular checkups to someone like that. I think I’ve been to the dentist twice in the past 15 years.
That may be a bit of an unfair characterization, don’t you think? It’s not as if the guy is pitching ‘ludes on the corner, or has a candy bowl on the receptionist’s desk chock full o’ crack vials.
Hrrm I should also point out that I have always LIKED the dentist.
Each time I go there I spend 3 min getting my teetch scraped, 5 min being lectured to floss then a brief teeth polishing and then I get shoved out the door.
FYI I don’t floss and I’ve never had a cavity or a dental appointment take more than 15 min.
I had one filling but that was because I naturally have deep grooves in my molars and a dentist was worried about stuff getting stuck in there and causing a cavity.
But the filling fell out a few years ago.
Well, though it’s kinda difficult not to draw comparisons to Bill Murray’s character in Little Shop of Horrors, I’m glad things have gone well for you in the past. However, even though I’m reasonably good about dental hygiene, sometimes stuff happens; and I find the high-pitched whine of that drill is best confronted while doped to the gills.
It’s not even the pain so much as it is the grinding sensation and the noise…it’s the same way some people are about biting tinfoil and/or fingernails on the chalkboard, only continuously.
Yech. I’m creepin’ myself out, here.
Bill Murray? In Little Shop of Horrors, it was Steve Martin.
There’s a dentist here that used to offer NO2 for the whole session, and headphones, so you could space out and ignore what was going on. I doubt he’s covered by my health insurance, but I’m trying to find another dentist that’s willing to do the same thing. I haven’t been in 4 or 5 years, and I don’t think I’ll be able to force myself to otherwise.
Losses would be negligible. Assuming we’re talking about Valium, the highest strength (10mg) generic diazepam goes for about $15 for 90 pills. That’s dirt cheap.
I wouldn’t worry about creating addicts either. I’m not sure whether the OP’s example dentist is talking about benzodiazapines (Valium, Xanax, et al.) or painkillers (opiates like Lortab and Percocet), but in either case, most people would have to take these drugs every day for at least a few weeks to notice any kind of withdrawal symptoms.
I would go to a dentist that advertised that he used nitrous oxide. Too many dentists don’t use it at all, for what reason I’m not sure. Any bad effect nitrous has on a person’s health only comes about after constant, daily abuse. Of course, someone at a Dead concert with 100 nitrous balloons could asphyxiate himself if he didn’t breathe enough regular air, but the dentist’s machine prevents any kind of scenario like that.
One dentist I visited in high school had a dusty, disused cylinder of N20 sitting in the corner for years. Once, when he was about to drill a tooth, I asked if he could hook me up to it. He said he “wasn’t allowed to use nitrous.” Huh? I didn’t question him furthur at the time, but his reply made me wonder.
I’ve always had bad luck with dentists. One childhood dentist (circa mid-1980s) once painfully pulled a semi-loose tooth out of my head with his bare, ungloved hands. He just reached right in there and yanked the sucker out. When I told my mom about this, she found me another dentist immediately. A few months later, the barehanded dentist went to prison for tax evasion.
Bill Murray played the masochist guy that enjoyed Steve Martin’s tender mercies. 'Twas only one scene and not an important one, but that’s who I was making the comparison to. 