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 the UAE 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 moisturiser 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 jabbering hypochondriac. Was it lung cancer? Throat cancer? Emphysema? Would I have my larynx chopped out and replaced by a synthesized 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 during 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 forties talking like a Dalek. Roll on 2016, I say.
Abu Dhabi Up in Smoke?
There’s no doubt about it, Abu Dhabi has a passionate love affair with tobacco. Across the city, it’s almost impossible to find a bar or café that doesn’t allow smoking throughout, or at least have a smokers’ section within its doors.
Statistics back this up. According to the Health Authority of Abu Dhabi (HAAD), 42 per cent of males aged over 17 in the capital smoke – almost double the national average of 23 per cent. Worryingly, 24.3 per cent of males aged 13 to 17 also enjoy puffing on a cancer stick.
But the days when smokers can happily chug away could soon be coming to an end as it seems likely smoking will be banned in all indoor public spaces sometime in the near future, including all restaurants, cafés and hotels. Although it is uncertain when this law will come in, the proposed Federal National Tobacco Law will include a clause prohibiting smoking in public places, which will put the UAE in line with many other countries as well as guidelines proposed by the World Health Organisation.
The ban will not apply to shisha cafés, although they will have to introduce shorter opening times and put health warnings on pipes. Shisha joints in residential areas may have to relocate to other locations within two years as well. The laws will also ban tobacco advertising on billboards and print.
In a seemingly tobacco-friendly city such as Abu Dhabi, these laws may herald a massive change in lifestyle, but in a country where the bars and restaurants have alfresco terraces and where venturing outside is only unpleasant at the height of summer, it’s not going to have too drastic an effect on smokers’ habits.
But the reasons for the ban are clear – second hand smoke is a serious danger to everyone who breathes it in, being a direct cause of lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, bronchitis and asthma. Research has shown that non-smokers whose partners smoke have a 20-30 per cent higher chance of developing lung cancer, while non-smokers who are exposed to smoke in the workplace have a 15-20 per cent higher chance of developing the disease.
In the UK, where a ban was introduced in 2007, the number of people suffering heart attacks fell 2.4 per cent in the first year, while the number of smokers fell 11 per cent. Expect similar improvements in people’s health when the laws are finally introduced in the UAE.
Smoke-free dining
Most of Abu Dhabi’s cafés welcome smokers, but there is a small minority that doesn’t serve up coffee with a side helping of lung disease…
Jones the Grocer: This excellent eatery and winner of this year’s Time Out Abu Dhabi Restaurant Award for best café has a blanket ban on smoking.
Al Mamoura Building, Muroor (02 443 8762).
The One Café: Located upstairs in a furniture shop, this cosy little diner is strictly no smoking, meaning you’ll have the lung capacity to climb the winding stairs next time you stop by for a spot of post-shopping coffee.The delicious afternoon cream tea served here also make this place well worth a visit.
Next to BMW showroom, Khalidiyah (02 681 6500).
Dome Café: Smoking has recently been banned in this spacious café in Khalidiyah Mall, making it one of the few mall pit stops that needn’t display a health warning. Perfect if you’re out and about shopping with the littl’uns and want to enjoy a more family-friendly bite.
Khalidiyah Mall (02 635 4562).
