I had mine removed at the end of my first semester of college, when I was 18, while they were still under the gums. So my conscious experience is only the aftermath of four incisions in my gums, while I was home for winter break. My bad experience was 100% due to the drugs, and as a result, my younger brother opted for only local anesthesia when he had his wisdom teeth taken out a few years later.
I am super duper squeamish, and we warned the oral surgeon of that, so they started me on gas before putting in an IV. As the nurse was putting in the IV, she remarked what great veins I had, saying I must work out. I just laughed a little, but thankfully the gas mask kept me from talking, because I was so high on the nitrous that I'd have admitted that the only workout that arm got was from masturbation.
But then a minute later, the doctor said, oops, we've never had that happen before, an IV just falling apart like that. Don't worry, we'll get that cleaned up. So apparently I was bleeding onto the floor. I didn't dare look down at my arm. As high as I was on the gas, I still was not about to deal with that as squeamish as I am, so I took a couple of super deep breaths of the gas and knocked myself completely out basically. The song that was playing in the office ("More than Words" by Extreme) still triggers me when I hear it, as I started to have this terrifying hallucination of hanging from a pendulum-swinging rope over an endless pit.
As I regained consciousness at the end of the procedure, still reclined in the chair, they were removing the device that held my mouth open, and one of my legs fell off the side of the chair, I think as a final reaction to the hallucination. The next memory I have is being in the elevator, with the doctor helping me down to where my mom had pulled the car to the door of the building with the passenger seat reclined as far back as it would go. I was out like a light until my mom woke me to tell me she was running into the pharmacy to pick up my pain pills. I fell asleep again, until it was time to get out of the car and go to my bedroom. I was still very unsteady, and my mom was having to help me walk up the stairs to my bedroom. She then insisted that I go pee before I crawled into bed (on the doctor's advice, given the amount of fluid they put into me via the IV), but since I still was very unsteady, she had to help me to the bathroom. It was the first time she had seen my penis since my last pediatrician exam more than two years before, when I turned 16. I was too busy holding onto the tile wall beside the toilet to be embarrassed.
As I was getting into bed, she had me take a pain pill. She must have kept me on those pills, because I basically lost a whole day. Not sure if she kept helping me to the bathroom. I don't remember anything. I also apparently was very nauseated, either by the whole experience triggering my squeamishness, or more likely due to the pain pills. Anyway, despite not eating anything, I apparently was vomiting what little water I drank, or dry heaving, to the point where the doctor prescribed a suppository the next day to deal with the nausea. Thankfully, he also suggested first easing off the pain pills, which stopped the vomiting and spared me the experience of needing the suppository, which my mom would have had to help me with.
Some days later, when at the follow-up with the oral surgeon, he told my mom that the good news is that I definitely was not a drug user, because I got zero joy from it. He was right. I've been a total square in the following three decades. I've also avoided any procedure requiring more than local anesthetic.
That said, I highly recommended that oral surgeon to anyone who would listen until he retired. I did have one "dry socket" out of the total four extractions, which he treated with a poultice, but otherwise everything healed up beautifully. The drugs are the only thing I'd avoid if I had to do it over again.