I routinely get dental work done without Novacaine or gas. Since the outside surfaces of our teeth have no “feeling”, there is no need to have it unless the work you’re having done goes deep into the tooth, where all the nerve endings are. The only risk of pain in these instances is if the drill (or other implement) were to slip and hit your gums. The worst thing I’ve had done without the drugs was something called “root scaling”, which is in fact painful, but I toughed it out for the most part, only requesting Novacaine for the super sensitive area right behind my top front teeth. As for weird…before I got braces at age 11, I had 8 teeth pulled (4 of them adult teeth), and had to wear an expander that “stretched” the roof of my mouth out, one tiny increment at a time. At 40 years old now, after having wisdom teeth removed, my mouth is still crowded!