Everybody's experience is different. This is from a friend who decided enough was enough and left over 9 months ago.
It sums up the increasingly common opinion among folks. It is very well what you could get yourself into, and how your life will be under the current rostering and management. Simple things can make that change, but as has been written elsewhere many, many times it is highly doubtful that the changes needed will occur.
It’s now just like a bad dream remembering what it was like to be in a constant state of jet-lag and tiredness. My memory is working much better again, I don’t feel like I am forcing my brain to think (it is running in oil again, not in muck) connections are back to normal and available to use, not constantly looking for things in there. I remember days where I couldn't pick up a book, had the attention span of a gold fish, and could barely have a coherent conversation. I know it was bad, but it is hard to really bring back how it felt on those days. Like you said, my mind is free of all that now.
It did take a long time, and I do feel sometimes that it has left marks. I’m doing a lot of things that were left on the shelf for years, putting pictures in order of the last decade, can sit there for a few hours doing the same thing without either falling asleep or losing interest. I am able to come with ideas to do with the kids, as in, things that will be fun for them, and either teach them something about science or show them something from nature. For the first time in a long time I am playing and laughing frequently with my children. I am bounding out of bed again.
It doesn't all revolve around work anymore, work is something that interrupts life now, not control it. Again, perhaps its just me getting older, or having learned a lesson from my time in the middle east, but I do think being in that state of mind, many times a zombie, sometimes being able to see what I used to be like from before EK, and at the end of holidays actually being myself again, for a short time. The sheer exhaustion, jet lag and undeniable fatigue is not for me. it was slowly grinding me down, I am just not suited for the life we lived in Dubai. Is anyone? Maybe, but I think there a quite a few who kid themselves about that because they have forgotten how it feels to be ‘normal.’
The trap is well and truly set for those joining. The way things are set up, with the Bond, zero interest loans, free housing etc EK are making you theirs for 7-10 years. You are most definitely their slave. They don't care about you, your life, or your family. It is about you flying their jets and that is all. Get back from a trip and just manage to get yourself functioning again before being sent away on another trip. As you well know, many times - most? - you aren't even functioning again before being sent on another trip. They don't care that they are burning you out, their goal is set on 7-10 years and then throwing you away. If you make it that far. I am certain people leave after that many years and suddenly go "what happened? Why did I waste my life there?"
I, my wife, and my family are the happiest we have been in over 5 years. We are functioning again and living life.
Not merely existing.