Freddie Janman, 18, has revealed he was secretly vaping from his hospital bed even as doctors fought to stabilize his breathing.
The Surrey, UK musician spoke out about the asthma attack that finally ended his six-year addiction, which began when friends offered him a vape at age 12. What started as an innocent-looking habit with a pleasant taste and mild buzz escalated into consuming roughly 1,200 puffs daily at its peak.
Janman kept his addiction hidden from his parents throughout his early teens, purchasing a new 2,400-puff refillable device every other day. At school, he and other students would crowd into bathroom cubicles to vape together. “You’d be vaping at school in the toilets,” he recalled. “Everyone would sneak off and get inside the cubicles together and be vaping.”
The musician had been diagnosed with severe asthma at just three years old, a condition that made his vaping habit especially dangerous. By age 16, repeated trips to the doctor for chest infections forced him to confront the truth about his usage. He attempted to quit three separate times without success.
Everything changed on March 30. “My chest was really tight and my heart… I can only describe it as it felt like it was squeezed,” Janman said. He had spent the entire day feeling as though he was breathing through a straw before his girlfriend, Zoe, drove him to the hospital.
Doctors grew deeply alarmed by his condition and admitted him for four nights. Even during this critical period, Janman admitted to “sneakily” continuing to vape from his hospital bed. The turning point came in early April, when hospital staff connected him with a Stop Smoking nurse who helped him commit to quitting for good.
“It tasted nice and I got a bit of a buzz from it,” Janman had said of his initial introduction to vaping, noting that the devices “just looked really innocent” to him as a young teenager. But his perspective shifted dramatically during his recovery. “It’s such a serious epidemic that people are aware of, but I don’t think they really understand the scale of it,” he said.
The nurse provided nicotine gum and patches to manage his cravings, while his doctor prescribed a beclometasone inhaler to reduce airway inflammation. The combined support gave Janman the tools he needed to follow through on a decisive moment of clarity. “At that moment, I threw my vape in the bin… and I had some clarity,” he shared. “I needed to just hit this on the head, so I did.”
Janman described the improvement in his health since quitting as “night and day,” and stated he has not “touched” a vape since that hospital stay.
The teenager’s story highlights the rapid escalation of youth vaping, where social introduction among friends can mask the severity of nicotine addiction until a medical emergency forces confrontation.