Smoking in the UAE

I still remember my first cigarette. I was 14 years old, and it was at a family friend’s barbecue. My older brother (aged 16) offered me a Marlboro Red as a challenge, and I took it, because not taking it would have been seen as seriously uncool.

It tasted foul, made my head spin and felt like sandpaper on the back of my throat, but I believed the act of smoking it in front of the other kids made me look edgy, a bit streetwise and as though I was the kind of person they should want to hang out with.

Fast-forward five years, and I’d just finished my A-levels. By now, my edgy show of bravado was a proper addiction and I was puffing away on at least 10 a day.

It was an expensive habit (approximately Dhs6 for a small pack in the UK back in 1993) that ate into the wages from my Saturday job. I smoked Silk Cut (much lower in tar than Marlboro) and was obsessed with my breath, chewing gum like Violet Beauregarde to neutralise the halitosis.

By the time I was 25, I’d smoked, on average, 10 cigarettes a day for 10 years. Sometimes, while on yet another fag break during my very boring office job in London, I thought about that and felt very uncomfortable. After all, 365 multiplied by 10 is 3,650. If I multiplied that number by 10 years, I got a conservative estimate of my cigarette consumption to date – a terrifying 36,500. I often wondered what the insides of my lungs looked like, what they smelt like, and what 36,500 fag butts would look like in a pile. Then I’d push the thoughts away and light up again.

And smoking was great. I enjoyed it. Smokers were more fun than non-smokers, especially in the workplace. You were part of the exclusive smokers’ club, which met every hour on the outside office steps and swapped company and colleague gossip. And anyway, giving up smoking made you fat.

I’m ashamed to say that it was another five years before I finally got to grips with my addiction. In that time, my cigarette consumption rose dramatically. I’d moved to Dubai, where fags were – oh joy – a fraction of UK prices. And you were allowed to smoke everywhere. My intake rose to 20 a day (sometimes more) and I even smoked in the office – ashtray next to my keyboard like some ghastly throwback from a ’70s TV sitcom.

I began to worry about my health. My skin was grey and I often had a cough. But I didn’t quit. Instead, I spent hours in the gym trying to ‘counteract’ the effects. I took vitamin supplements, drank gallons of green tea, used copious amounts of anti-ageing moisturisers and regularly ran 6km on the treadmill, only (and I am so ashamed of this now) to light up again once the workout was over. At one point I enlisted the help of a hypnotherapist, who promised me she could cure me in just one session. It worked for a few days – but my heart wasn’t in it. Socialising wasn’t much fun without ciggies and I missed my fag-break buddies.

Every cough, sore throat and tightening in my chest transformed me into a jibbering hypochondriac. Was it lung cancer? Throat cancer? Emphysema? Would I have my larynx chopped out and replaced by a synthesised voice box that sounded like a Dalek? At this stage I was desperate to kick the habit. Many times I tried to give up, only to fail, usually hours later. You see, I wanted to quit. But I couldn’t. By now, wanting a cigarette was like being desperately thirsty on a hot day, and denying the craving was like forcing myself to walk past a chilled water cooler.

I’d probably still be smoking now if I hadn’t fallen pregnant at the age of 30. I could rationalise slowly killing myself, but inflicting cigarettes on my unborn baby was unthinkable. At last, I had real motivation to quit. The cigarettes went down the toilet (the first time I’d ever done that). On previous attempts to give up, I’d just stuck them half-heartedly in a drawer.

I went cold turkey (nicotine patches and gum aren’t recommended in pregnancy). I fought against the cravings hour by hour and then day by day, visualising my baby being poisoned in the womb every time I felt my resolve weakening. Other aspects helped too. Just 24 hours after giving up, my sense of smell improved (I realised how nasty smokers smell). After a week, I stopped struggling to breathe. After three weeks, my skin looked far better and the ghastly cravings finally began to disappear. From then on, it was pretty easy. Although that’s not to say I haven’t had my moments. I’d smoked for 16 years by the time I gave up. In the months that followed, I had anxiety dreams that I was smoking again, while just one whiff of someone else’s cigarette at a party still causes me to inhale deeply.

I’ve been smoke-free for five years and feel younger, fitter and healthier for it. I don’t chew gum all the time, I don’t have to scrub the yellow from my fingers and I don’t worry about developing lung cancer any more. Ultimately, quitting smoking was extremely tough. But in six years’ time, my body will have recovered to such an extent that I’ll be as healthy as someone who’s never smoked – an amazing prospect considering I thought I’d enter my 40s talking like a Dalek. Roll on 2016, I say.

The law

It’s likely that smoking will be banned in all indoor public spaces in the UAE, including in restaurants, cafés and hotels, by the end of the year. The proposed Federal National Tobacco Law will include a clause prohibiting any indoor smoking rooms in public places, in keeping with the guidelines of the World Health Organisation. The public space ban will not be applied to shisha cafés, but they will have to introduce shorter opening times and put warnings on pipes. The new bylaws are likely to be confirmed by September.

The centres

There is one smoking cessation clinic in Rashid Hospital (04 219 2000) and another clinic is expected to open soon in Al Twar Health Center (04 502 2100). You can attend via referral from any physician from another primary healthcare centre or by taking an appointment from Al Twar Health Center.