No opioids after my wisdom teeth extraction would have resulted in potentially suicide. The pain was unbearable, and 3-4 days of hydrocodone was absolutely proscribed.

There is nothing wrong with opiates being used for acute pain relief. They are a modern miracle when put to such uses.

The problem comes when you start using them for long-term pain relief - a use-case in which they are neither appropriate or effective.

A typical 2-3 day prescription after major dental (or other) work is not remotely a problem, and I really have no idea why this is where the focus is. It's always been long-term abuse as the actual problem - the weird overreaction over a few days use for acute pain is utterly absurd and only hurts people in some bizzare way for folks to feel they are "helping" fix the abuse problem.

Definitely varies by individual, and by the nature of the situation. My personal experience, as somebody who considers himself to have a pretty high threshold of pain tolerance, is that I never needed any of the Vicodin I was prescribed after wisdom tooth removal... but I can't imagine how I would have survived without Oxycodone in the first week after rotator cuff surgery.

Co-codamol (codeine and paracetamol) is widely prescribed IME in the UK, eg for back pain, muscle pain.

I had Oramorph for abdominal pain (in hospital, no surgery thankfully). The condition may have been caused by medium term use of Ibuprofen (in my non-medical opinion).

So you mean like Spain where 800mg tabs of ibuprofen are over-the-counter?