Teenager who vaped from age 12 and spent £4k on addiction beat six-year habit when asthma attack left him in hospital

A teenager who was taken to hospital with an asthma attack after excessive vape use said he was “that addicted” that he was still secretly vaping from his hospital bed, despite being warned that the habit could kill.

Freddie Janman, 18, a musician from Surrey, was diagnosed with asthma at the age of three, and he said he required “consistent” hospital admissions due to dust, pet hair and exercise.

When a friend introduced him to vaping aged 12, Freddie said he would “always get really bad chest infections” that often required antibiotics, but he grew to be addicted to the habit.

At its peak, Freddie was inhaling around 1,200 vape puffs a day, the equivalent of 80mg of nicotine or two packets of cigarettes, from the moment he woke up in the morning until right before he went to sleep again that night.

By the time Freddie was 18, he estimates he spent at least £4,000 on vapes or refills.

On the morning of March 30 this year, Freddie said he felt a tight chest, as if his heart was being “squeezed”, which worsened in the evening to feeling like he was “breathing through a straw”.

So his girlfriend, Zoe Henrick, 18, drove him to A&E, where he was triaged and told his oxygen levels were “really low”.

Freddie spent four days in hospital with an oxygen mask on, before he was encouraged to say that he smoked cigarettes in order to be able to see a Stop Smoking nurse for help with kicking his vaping habit.

“It was just really rough,” Freddie told PA Real Life, of his time in hospital.

“The crazy thing was – and I didn’t tell anyone this – but I was still that addicted, that I cheekily (vaped) when no one was looking in the hospital bed.

“I didn’t want to let it go,” he added.

According to a survey by the public health charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), 19% of 11 to 17-year-olds in Britain have tried vaping.

Nazir Hussain, Clinical Lead at Asthma + Lung UK and Specialist Respiratory Pharmacist, told PA Real Life: “Freddie’s experience of vaping as a young child is sadly far too common.

“There is a growing body of evidence linking vaping to respiratory problems in children.

“For those with lung conditions like asthma, we know it can worsen symptoms and trigger asthma attacks.”

When Freddie first got into vaping aged 12, after a friend his age introduced it to him while they were playing video games, he felt “it just looked really innocent”.

“Which is something really important,” he said.

“To a young kid back then… it wasn’t like him handing me a pack of cigarettes where it would create horrible smoke.

“It tasted nice and I got a bit of a buzz from it.”

Freddie said his addiction to the habit “very quickly grew” from there, including figuring out which shops near him were not stringent on checking identification, as the legal minimum age to buy them is 18.

“You’d be vaping at school in the toilets,” Freddie said.

“Everyone would sneak off and get inside the cubicles together and be vaping.”

Within six months, Freddie went from having a 600 puff disposable vape over the course of a week to getting through a 2,400 puff refillable one that would last just two days.

Keeping his vaping secret from his parents, an average day for Freddie would consist of waking up and reaching for his vape first thing from bed, doing it all day at school and continuing right up until he went to sleep.

“It was like that all day, every day,” Freddie said, of his vaping habit for six years.

Throughout that time, Freddie’s asthma diagnosis meant he was more susceptible to pick up chest infections, so he regularly went to his GP and was prescribed antibiotics to clear them.

In the beginning, Freddie did not disclose that he vaped because he thought he might get into trouble, but a doctor pointing out the “bizarre” frequency of them made him open up about it aged 16.

As a result, doctors repeatedly told Freddie to stop vaping and encouraged him to use NHS resources online to help him do so, but he said it was “easier said than done”.

He unsuccessfully tried to quit three times, until he woke up on March 30 2026 before a planned day out with Zoe at Thorpe Park.

Freddie said: “My chest was really tight and my heart… I can only describe it as it felt like it was squeezed.

“It was really tight,” he added.

He took the acid reflux medication omeprazole and heartburn tablets and said he just tried to “crack on” with the day.

That evening, Freddie said he realised that the tightness had “not gone away” and it felt like he was “breathing out of a straw” so Zoe drove him to A&E at the Royal Surrey County Hospital.

Freddie was triaged and said doctors seemed “very concerned” so he was admitted for four nights, where he received oxygen.

It was during this hospital admission that Freddie said he continued to “sneakily” vape from his hospital bed.

That is, until he spoke to a Stop Smoking nurse on April 2.

Freddie said: “It’s such a serious epidemic that people are aware of, but I don’t think they really understand the scale of it.

“At that moment, I threw my vape in the bin… and I had some clarity.

“I needed to just hit this on the head, so I did.”

The nurse gave Freddie nicotine gum and patches to help him quit, on top of a doctor prescribing a beclometasone inhaler that works by reducing swelling of the airways in the lungs to make breathing easier and stops symptoms such as wheezing and coughing developing.

Freddie said he has not “touched” a vape since and his health has significantly improved and it has been “night and day” since then.

He was so thankful of the care he received while in hospital that the night he was discharged, he wrote a song about it called Sacrifice My Soul, under his artist name, fredstar.

Freddie said: “I just left feeling a euphoria of gratefulness.

“And if I can stop someone from picking up a vape by sharing my story, then I’m happy.”

Asthma + Lung UK’s helpline is here to support anyone with a lung condition, and their loved ones – get in touch on 0300 222 5800. You can listen to Sacrifice My Soul on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/track/2wS6FKGJXqqjXebiStX0Wt?si=260c1aff77e34d1f.