Dubai: Quitting smoking comes easy for 33-year old Nizar Al Aridi. Unfortunately, so does the habit of picking it up again.
Al Aridi took up smoking relatively late, when he was 22 years old.
"I had a lot of friends who smoked, so I would just take cigarettes from them until I started smoking on my own," he told Gulf News.
Pretty soon, he was smoking about a pack a day.
Two years later, in 2000, he quit smoking for the first time when he joined the Lebanese Army and enrolled in university. Quitting came easy - "I just lost the taste for it" - as he had his hands full with military training and college.
But that phase didn't last long. Three years later, he picked up the habit again; he would finish one-and-a-half packs a day. He blames the pressure of finding a job after graduation and the smokers among his friends for his relapse.
In 2005, Al Aridi decided to stop smoking for fun. He made a New Year's resolution in Dubai with his uncle, who had quit smoking a decade ago.
To his surprise, it stuck.
"By day two, I remembered how good it was to no longer smoke. I didn't feel like I was wasting my time again with cigarettes," he said.
"I used to be nervous when I smoked. And I felt I was missing life because I was too busy smoking," he added.
Although the cravings came in force later, Al Aridi was determined by then to kick the habit. He remained smoke-free for two more years. Then he started smoking shisha and cigars, in social settings.
He did not think he was in danger of becoming addicted again.
But the lure of tobacco proved too strong, and although he did not pick up cigarettes again, he became hooked to shisha in 2008. "I had to have shisha almost every day," he confided.
When his wife became pregnant, he thought about quitting the habit again. His wife told him his smoking was endangering her and the baby's health. He listened and cut down.
Now, he said, he only smokes shisha rarely, "like once a month". However, remaining completely tobacco-free is still something he has not been able to do.
Dr Bassam Mahboub, vice-president of the Emirates Respiratory Society, told Gulf News cases such as Al Aridi's are not that unusual. "It's easier for people to quit smoking if they started late," he said.
He warned it could become harder for someone to quit the habit the longer one stayed with it. The time one starts, plus the duration of the habit, increases the difficulty of quitting.
"So if you start early but quit after two weeks, it's easy. And if you start late but stay with it for a few years, then it is harder to quit," he added.
Al Aridi is not too concerned, however. He is confident he will be smoke-free soon. "If you think quitting is too hard, you will never stop," he said.
