Teenager's Lung Collapses After Vaping for a Year | 22 Words

Vaping seems like the perfect alternative to smoking traditional cigarettes - one of the main advantages being that you can get it in an array of flavors that don't smell gross or leave both your breath and your hands with the stench of the cigarette you just smoked. They've also become a popular way of people weening themselves off traditional cigarettes, with the hope of eventually ditching the habit altogether.

And, as with most things that sound too good to be true, there's usually a downside.

There have been a number of cases in recent years wherein vapers have been hospitalized with nasty effects caused by using the devices. Which isn't all too surprising because, let's be honest, do we actually know what's in the liquids?

One teen has been left dealing with the horrific consequences of vaping which caused his lung to collapse after just a year of having the habit. Now, he's revealed pictures of the true extent of the damage in his body, urging people to think twice before picking up a vape pen.

Keep scrolling to take a look at the horrifying impact of vaping for yourself...

 

"Vaping" has become hugely popular in recent years.

via: Getty

 The use of e-cigarettes has been rising at the fastest-recorded rate of any other substance, so there's a hell of a lot of people that are doing it.

It was originally intended to help people kick their smoking habit.

via: Getty

 Vaping came on the scene as an alternative method to quit smoking as users can choose how many milligrams of nicotine they want to smoke, though it should be noted that the devices have never officially been approved as a stop-smoking method.

Vaping has especially become popular among teens.

Though it may have been intended for adults trying to quit smoking, there's now a staggering number of teens who've never smoked a cigarette in their lives, opting to vape on e-cigarette devices.

And there's one brand that's arguably responsible for vaping going "viral."

via: Getty

 The popular vaping brand, Juul, takes up more than half of all e-cigarette retail market sales in the U.S. With its stylish design and small and discrete size, it's no wonder that teens are finding this brand in particular so appealing. The sleek devices could easily be mistaken for a USB stick, but the e-cigarette contains as much nicotine as 1 to 2 packs of cigarettes, which is alarmingly 3 times higher than the nicotine levels permitted in the European Union, meaning Juul can’t actually be sold in Europe.

With the vast array of flavors, vaping can be very tempting.

There's no less-than-pleasant odor as with ordinary cigarettes and with flavors ranging from cheesecake to passionfruit, the e-cigarette devices can seem irresistible to impressionable teens.

But it's not all sunshine and rainbows.

Vaping liquids still have the highly addictive drug, nicotine, in them. The substance is known to cause harmful side effects in young people's bodies and brains, with some evidence to say that nicotine exposure may make the developing brain become more sensitive to substance use disorders later in life.

Not to mention the fact that trying to quit nicotine is a whole other ball game.

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 Trying to quit the drug can lead to serious withdrawal symptoms, including nervousness, restlessness, anxiety, depression, and fatigue.

But, apart from nicotine, do we actually know what's in the vaping liquids that so many people smoke?

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 Experts have warned that vaping devices can be contaminated with harmful chemicals such as traces of endotoxin, a microbial agent that can be found on gram-negative bacteria or glucan, which is found in the cell walls of most fungi. Both of these toxins are known to cause asthma and decreased lung function.

Just weeks ago, 8 teenagers were hospitalized after vaping THC.

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 The teens had severe lung damage after inhaling the psychoactive compound - found in marijuana - via a vaping pen.

And the vape pens themselves have been known to have deadly consequences.

via: Primary Children's Hospital/The New England Journal of Medicine

 A seventeen-year-old was left with a shattered jaw and multiple missing teeth after his vape pen exploded in his mouth. But, even more scarily, at least 2 people have died as a result of e-cigarette explosions in recent years. Last year, a Florida man was killed after his vape pen blew up, sending pieces of the device into his head and starting a small fire in his home. Then, in February, a twenty-four-year-old man’s vape pen exploded and hit the carotid artery in his neck, causing a fatal stroke.

And it seems another vaper has had a brush with death.

A teenager from Florida has spoken out about the dangers of vaping after having his own terrifying health scare as a result of using an e-cigarette.

Chance Ammirata was a regular user of the popular Juul pods.

via: Getty

 The eighteen-year-old student told the Daily Mail that he started vaping using the Juul e-cigarettes around eighteen months ago as he thought that they were a "safe" alternative for smoking normal cigarettes - vaping 1 pod every couple of days.

But, last week, he needed emergency surgery because of them.

Last Monday, the teen said that he struggled to sleep because of pain on his left side, but put it down to muscle strain rather than presuming the worst.

But his pain quickly intensified...

The following day, Chance went bowling with friends, where merely trying to sit down in a plastic chair left him in agony. "I remember she made me laugh and it felt like my chest was collapsing like I was having a heart attack," he explained.

So, his friend decided that it was time for a trip to the hospital.

The teen waited 5 hours to be seen, but, before he knew it, he was surrounded by surgeons, who told him that his left lung had collapsed. 

The eighteen-year-old was then rushed in for emergency surgery.

via: Instagram

 The surgeons had to insert a tube into his lung to keep it inflated (which he had to keep in for a week), and were luckily able to repair the hole in his lung. Chance was in shock by the life-threatening diagnosis as he hadn't suffered from any of the usual symptoms such as coughing or wheezing.

But there was more bad news for the teen...

via: Instagram

 The surgeons told him that whatever he had been smoking had left black dots on his lungs that would likely take years to heal, although they may never heal at all. To top it off, Chance was also told that he won't ever be able to do cross-country running or scuba dive, and it'll be a long while before he can fly again.

The teen has never smoked normal cigarettes and says that it was the Juul vaping pods that caused the damage.

via: Instagram

 The teen took to social media to share the horrifying image of his lungs, writing: "You thought Juuls were safe. So did I." "The black dots on my lungs are reminiscence of juuling."

He is now warning fellow vapers about the dangers.

via: Instagram

 "I've been doing it for a year and a half and can never do it again - you really shouldn't either. I know how hard it is to change anyone's mind who's addicted because I was too. And I don't think anyone could have said anything to make me stop," he wrote. "But your lungs most likely look like this too if you've been smoking. "Don't let it get worse - please stop - like really, please. It's so f*****g scary."

Now, he's even started a petition to put an end to vaping.

At the time of writing, the petition has 120 signatures, although the numbers are rising pretty fast. With his newfound platform, Chance regularly posts online about his experience and why all forms of smoking are just as bad as each other. But despite his best efforts, for now, vaping or "juuling" is still fairly prevalent amongst teens. Keep scrolling to find out more about the rise of the habit and how teens are easily hiding it from their parents.