alfrombarking

Bored to death in Dubai: Booze and gas-sniffing... After a 15-year-old plunges to his death, how pampered expat children are rebelling against stultifyingly sterile lives


Typical Daily Hate headline

Norm_uk

A sensationalised tabloid article about how some expat teens do indeed get up to no good in the bubble that is Dubai...

Who would have thought?

N.

OriginalSunshine

I bet none of them drank from litre bottles of cider on the green whilst sniffing lighter fluid because they were bored out of their teenage brains... it's what teenagers do, and I'm sure most people know of a teenager from their era that ended up hospitalised or worse; at least if they were British.

OleJanx

LITRE bottles? My! You were refined! It always used to be 3 litre bottles of Shite Lightning or other kerosene based "drinks" that the park dwellers drank whilst inhaling butane in my day. Must be an old fart now....
(Hey! Which rude bugger said "Yes")

Millhouse

We used to punch a hole in the side of a can and shotgun the thing in as quickly as possible. Ah, happy days...

Arcadia

We lived in Abu Dhabi from 1999 until leaving in 2010. Our son was only 5years old when we arrived there.

He often went to parties were alcohol was available, a Lebanese guy used to sell all the teenagers as much booze as they needed.

They would either all go to a villa were a boy from school lived
or rent a flat on a nightly basis in corniche towers. A British girl once had photographs taken of her performing a sex act on a local lad and it was circulated around Abu Dhabi because of these booze parties.

Gas sniffing and glue sniffing is widely known as the high of choice amongst the teens there..a British lad died just before we left because he had sniffed butane gas and a collegue of my husbands had to leave after his daughter was caught sniffing glue with a bunch of other kids of British and emirate nationality..all these substances are easily available at any corner shop.

It's all very dangerous and I caught my son stashing 3 litre bottles of absolute vodka in his wardrobe were I learnt they were going to a beach party at the intercon beach.

What do I blame?

Shopping malls, cinemas, bowling, ice skating after a few months become boring and they are often thrown out by jumped up security guards on segways. Also a lot of western kids were bullied by show off emiratee lads saying they could have them arrested and deported if they dared answer them back, so they tend to stick with other western kids and avoid the malls etc.

Too much money is another factor..my son included had 300dhs a weekend to spend and other kids had 500 dhs and more.

Parents working long hours or being too involved in their own social circuit and activities to realise what their kids were up to.

Anyway..I found out that my sons high of choice was butane gas and the reason it took me time to find out was because when he used to arrive home I never smelt booze on him, he wasn't in the kitchen raiding the cupboards cos he had the munchies or anything, I actually went into his bedroom one night to turn his light off and found him out cold with a can of gas on the bed next to him, it was a huge wake up call for me as I honestly didn't have a clue.

So, the wild drink and drugs parties are rife in the emirates and still are now because I've just been talking about it with my son and the kids that are still there are tweeting and posting on Facebook all about the latest party that happened on Thursday night

OleJanx

Shotgunning? And there was me thinking you were born in 1978....

scrubbedexpat141

I think everything you've written is interesting because it's what I consider the parent's perspective and sums up what's been said on this bored already.

When I was under age I was still 6 foot plus and with the other big lads we'd go out and buy the 3lt Frosty Jacks / White Lightning and get leathered in a park and try and finger birds. It's what we did. None of us ever smoked weed or were interested in sniffing poppers (it's for queers) or anything like that. WE weren't sensible, we'd get hammered but I remember being quizzed by my old dear for smelling of smoke because the guys I'd been with had been smoking weed non stop. I was actually sort of sensible but got grounded anyway. Gutted.

My group of mates were all fairly sensible, we looked out for each other and didn't get involved in any substances (they came later in life). We just got battered and chased fanny.

I reckon kids these days (given the lad in question was only 8 years my junior) have much less common sense, much less care for their mates, much less responsibility for their actions and a much lower attention span. If I'd grown up in this city I'd have ****ing loved it and made the most.

That being said, It's a crying shame what happened to this lad and I hope his family are being well looked after

Blue Cat

300 dhs a weekend? there's your answer then

Arcadia

I know, I will hold my hands up and say that looking back I gave my son too much "pocket money", He is at college in the Uk now and gets less than that to last him all week!

I spoilt him, simple as...I over compensated for him being away from his older brothers, aunties, uncles, grandparents all in the UK. I thought if I gave him everything he wanted he would be happy and not blame me for taking him away from them all.

It wasn't all crap...he went to places and saw bands in concert, went out for meals that some kids his age would never do, he remembers it all fondly and didn't take it for granted.

A lot of people working in the emirates have a lot of disposable income..we had two incomes and one child, had the full feather bed package so didn't have a lot to spend it on.

Anyway, I'm just trying to give you a small idea of what it's like for teens I made mistakes and looking back would have done things differently. My heart goes out to the parents..it could so easily have been mine.

commander

when you found out he was sniffing gas, what punishment did you give out? What was the outcome of the 'wake up call' cut his allowance to 40Pounds a weekend?

Arcadia

Lol commander..I'm from the North East..believe me the punishment fit the crime. But seriously we were leaving anyway so grounded til the day we got on the plane, force to walk around the Hamdan centre Buying tacky gifts for the family.Luckily for us all it wasn't an addiction that he had to get treatment for, he said he did cos his mates did and it felt good.

As for the 300dhs allowance that was kept firmly in my arse pocket.

I just wanted to let parents know that boozing and substance abuse is rife between the expat kids, but theres a lot more dangers too. Apart from the bullying by some local kids in the malls, there is a weird fascination that a lot of nationalities have with bumming each other, or...the villa behind mashreq bank on airport road were poppers and prostitutes were available to kids as young as 13..some KHalifa kates would be horrified to know what their teens were up to every weekend.

Norm_uk

Bloody hell reading all this makes me realise what a tight fisted fellow my Dad was.

I used to get a tenner every Saturday (early 90s)...after I cleaned his car, and spent an hour in his shop cleaning up.

N.

MacScot

...did you live in a shoebox in middle o' road?

seven seas

Thanks for sharing. Really.

I don't think 300 is a ridiculous amount of cash for a weekend, not when there are two nights out and a day at the beach to factor is. Sure, now you may think you were foolish but that's just hindsight. It's always easy to play the "I should have" game after the fact but who among us has not been able to do/consume things and keep that hidden from our parents? The same applies for our kids. The best we can hope for is endowing them with the common sense/confidence and secondhand experience needed to navigate the perils of young adulthood safely.
We all have our own version of the girl who was too easy/ the boy who drank too much. We all had a classmate who disappeared for a few years.

It happens here, it happens in Singapore, it happens everywhere.