Now, WISDOM teeth...
Oh lord. I can't rightly say I know what it's like to have your wisdom teeth extracted, even though I had all four taken out at once. I spent weeks stoned out of my mind on Lortabs because 17-year-old me thought he was invincible and used a straw two days after the procedure.
I've never had a root canal, but I can't imagine it being any worse than dry socket.
I had my wisdom teeth extracted and the process was pretty painless. :-) Dry sockets really suck, though... Probably worse than a normal root canal, but I'm going off of what I've heard others say. Root canals seem to only be exceptionally painful if you have to do a two-part root canal. I never needed more than 1/2 of a hydrocodon after my wisdom teeth were removed, but a whole pill was hardly enough for me after that root canal. It was dumb and certainly not what normal root canals are supposed to be like.
I imagine a dry socket feels more like that.