I Dreamed of Being a College Athlete. Then Vaping Almost Killed Me (Exclusive) (2025)

In October 2023, high school senior Addie Hunter was rushed to the emergency room because she couldn’t breathe. Doctors asked if she smoked or vaped. "I was like, 'No. She's not that crazy,'" her mother, Andrea Hunter, 44. recalls.

But on the fifth day in the hospital, her mother found a vape at the bottom of Addie's backpack. "My heart just sank," Andrea says. "I showed the doctor and they just went, 'Oh no.' They lost hope.'"

The northeastern Oklahoma teen had been vaping for six years. Her lungs were covered in blisters. Her left lung collapsed. She was put in a paralytic coma and placed on a ventilator.

Andrea and her husband Scott, 43, were told to prepare for the worst. But 13 days later, Addie opened her eyes.

Since then, Addie, 18, has graduated from high school. But other dreams were lost. A dedicated basketball player since the sixth grade, Addie had wanted to join a college team and hoped to be recruited for track. But competitive sports are no longer possible due to the lasting effects of her ordeal.

“She lost everything because she decided to vape,” Andrea says.

Below, Addie tells her story to PEOPLE’s Wendy Grossman Kantor.

I started vaping in seventh grade. I was at a friend’s house. Her stepmom did it. I wanted to be one of the cool kids.

I would always hold it in my mouth and just blow it out. I would never inhale it. But one day, I actually did inhale and I was freaking out. I was so happy. I was like, "I can inhale it! I'm not going to die!" Because that's what my parents always told me: “You're going to die if you inhale this.”

I was 12 years old. I was like, "Oh my gosh, I'm a cool kid now," because everybody was doing it.

But I didn't really get into vaping until high school, where literally everybody did it. I would go to parties, but didn't drink, I didn't smoke weed. I didn't do anything like that because I was always a designated driver, so I would bring my vape to parties to fit in.

Senior year, my best friend won homecoming queen, she wanted to go celebrate and I didn't really want to because I felt off. I figured I was getting sick. I went home, I took my asthma medicine, and the next day I woke up and literally could not breathe.

I was doing a nebulizer, breathing treatment, and I hit my vape while I'm doing a treatment, which is absolutely stupid. Don't ask me why I did that. But I hit a vape while I was doing a breathing treatment and it shut my lungs down completely, so I called my mom because my mom and dad were both at work and nobody was home with me. My mom rushed home.

My grandpa owns a home healthcare business, so he has a bunch of oxygen tanks — that's what literally kept me alive. When my oxygen tank ran out, I stopped breathing completely. I wasn't getting any air in whatsoever, literally I was just holding my breath at this point.

They rushed me to the hospital. On the way, I saw that my mom was rubbing my leg. But I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel my entire body. Once I lost feeling, it was literally like a movie. Everything went in super slow motion. I had no idea what was going on. Everything went black and I passed out.

When I woke up at Bailey Medical Center in Owasso, Okla., I was super light-headed. They told me that regular oxygen levels are 98 or 99. Mine was 50.

It was rough, but soon they got me stabilized. Because I wasn’t 18, I had to be transferred to another hospital in Tulsa, St Francis Children’s Hospital, about 20 minutes away.

The doctors at Bailey had put a BiPAP [a ventilation therapy] on me, which shoots air into your lungs and then takes it out, but it is the most uncomfortable thing in the world. Still, I was breathing, I was doing great.

But I guess in the ambulance going to the Tulsa hospital, I crashed again with the BiPAP machine on me, so that's when they turned on the lights and took off.

In Tulsa, they got me in a room immediately. I had a bunch of doctors and nurses already in there. They really had no idea on what was going on. They kept me on the BiPap and took blood and started running tests and doing x-rays. I was still awake and alert.

But around midnight, the doctor took my mother out into the hallway and said the blood tests came back and the CO2 levels were way too high. The doctor said they needed to put me in a paralytic coma with a breathing tube. They told my mom, "She's not going to make it on her own."

My mom says they shot albuterol straight down into my lungs and bagged and suctioned black, tar-like junk out of my lungs. They gave me fentanyl and magnesium and other pain medications and paralytics.

I was given Terbutaline, it's kind of like albuterol; it helps your lungs stay open. It's like a liquid breathing treatment in a tiny vial. They were putting it down into my lungs. But they actually ran out; apparently I used all of it that was left in the entire state of Oklahoma. They were reaching out to other states to get it and keep me alive. Then they switched to heliox, a mixture of helium and oxygen to see if that would help. I was asleep for all of that.

On the third day, doctors told my parents that there was nothing more that they could do.

I was still in the medically induced coma and could not move. But I could hear the doctor tell my parents that it was probably best to say their goodbyes because they were going to have to unplug me.

I was trying to move, but I couldn't move. I wanted to tell them, "No! I'm good!"

My mom looked at the doctor and said, "I'm sorry, but we believe in a higher power, and we believe that's not going to happen."

I remember my mom reading me Bible stories. I don't really remember anything else after that.

On the 13th day, they woke me back up. God healed me. But honestly, it was so much worse when I woke up because I was a literal vegetable. I couldn't move, I couldn't speak. I couldn't move my neck and could only look around with my eyes.

I was hospitalized for 32 days. I am not the same person that I was before.

When I got back, I did have all my friends — but didn't. A lot of people didn't want to talk to me because they didn't know what to say to me or what they could say around me.

Before I was hospitalized, I ran track, and colleges were talking to my track coach about me. I also love basketball and was hoping to play in college. After I got out of the hospital, all of that was gone.

Since then, my family has launched awebsiteabout the dangers of vaping. The amount of crap that's in vapes that they don't tell you about is disgusting. They literally use formaldehyde. The doctors told me that they would've rather me smoked a pack of cigarettes a day than ever picked up a vape, because that is how harmful vapes are.

Now, I speak about my experience at school assemblies in Kansas and Oklahoma, telling kids not to vape.

I say, "Don't be stupid like me." I tell them, “It's really not worth it.” I mean, putting your friends and family in that situation — having to make them watch you almost die — is something that I would not wish on my worst enemy.

I started doing these talks once a month, then another school district asked me to present every Friday. I have reached 3,000 students so far.

My goal is to save kids' lives. I have so many kids that'll just sit there and judge me and laugh at me and be like, "Oh, you're dumb for that."

I don’t care as long as I save at least one kid's life — which I know I have, because a girl who was at my first assembly still contacts me. She quit vaping the day that I did the assembly, and she said she had been struggling with it hardcore. I keep in contact with her, and every time that life gets hard for her, she knows to come to me.

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