After attempting to sleep off some chest symptoms, a young man who had been vaping for nine months nearly passed away and woke up choking and speechless.
When his parents took Sydney resident Xavier Roper, 22, to the intensive care unit after he woke up gasping for air, he was only 30 minutes away from passing away.
Mr. Roper started vaping “casually” with friends before it became a serious addiction that nearly killed him due to a serious lung infection.
Recalling his almost fatal encounter on The Project, Mr. Roper disclosed that the most perilous aspect of vaping is that it has no beginning or end—it simply “doesn’t leave your hand.”
It was going to be just another night in with friends when Mr. Roper had to leave early due to chest symptoms.
“At around three in the morning, I started waking up gasping for air and I could barely talk. I thought I’d just sleep it off and be fine in the morning,” he added.
I was breathing incorrectly and spluttering. I ended up waking my parents up and running to the Prince of Wales hospital, where I entered the intensive care unit right away.
Mr. Roper was fortunately just a ten-minute drive from the hospital, where the doctors assessed him and conveyed the gravity of the issue.
He was informed that when a secondary illness started to manifest, his lungs were so weakened from excessive vaping that they ‘couldn’t support themselves’.
Before vaping “spiralled,” according to Mr. Roper, it was a social affair, and he eventually bought his own.
Following that incident, Mr. Roper declared he would start “hitting” the vape every fifteen minutes and snuck away from work to sneak in a few hits.
He would also habitually use his vape while lying in bed when he was by himself at home because it didn’t smell and there was no social shame.
According to the most recent NSW Population Health Survey, the percentage of 16 to 24 year olds who vape tripled, from 4.5% in 2019–2020 to 16.5% in 2021–2022.
This is critical since regular nicotine use has been shown to alter adolescent brain development, learning, and memory, as well as exacerbate stress, despair, and anxiety.