Paul Danan: Hollyoaks and Love Island star says he 'died' after being rushed to hospital over vape addiction

Paul Danan, who is best known for playing Sol Patrick in Hollyoaks and for starring in the original series of Celebrity Love Island in 2005, has opened up on how he nearly “died”, over his addiction to vapes.

The 45-year-old who switched to e-cigarettes after years of smoking, has said it was a “miracle” he is still alive after he collapsed last month at his parent’s home and was rushed to hospital.

Danan, was taken to Whipps Cross Hospital in East London, where he spent a week in intensive care and also battled pneumonia during his stay. He has opened up in an interview with The Sun, recalling the terrifying experience, telling the publication: “I was dead - it's a miracle I'm here.”

Explaining what happened, Danan said: “I'm upstairs puffing away on my vape then suddenly I lost my breath and collapsed. My family called for an ambulance and started giving me CPR, then police arrived and took over before paramedics took me to hospital."

He continued: “I was on a machine in ICU and ended up with pneumonia. My family were warned that I might not make it through the night. I'm so lucky." He added: “The doctor was so, so harsh with me. She told me, ‘Paul, you don’t know how serious this was and you are going to be in here for a while now, on this oxygen’.

“She said if I ever smoke in any form again I risk being linked to an oxygen tank later on in life. She said that’s it now. After years of smoking cigarettes and all sorts, it’s the vaping which has done me in. That pushed me over the edge.”

Danan, who is son to eight-year-old Deniro, first started smoking vapes in 2021 after quitting cigarettes, explaining he was attracted to them by their flavours. He explained: “I saw a YouTube video where someone blew cigarette smoke into cotton wool then did the same with a vape.

“The cotton wool turned black from the smoke from the cigarette, but the wool remained the same colour after the vape vapour hit it, and that experiment was supposed to symbolise the lungs.”

Adding: “Off the back of that, in my head - because I have ADHD everything is very visual - I’ve always thought they’d be OK. I thought it was the safest way to smoke, as I didn’t want to use cigarettes any more.”

The NHS state on their website that “e-cigarettes have become a very popular stop smoking aid in the UK”, however vaping, “is not completely risk-free” and that the “long-term risks of vaping are not yet clear.”

Sarah McCann is a Trends Writer for NationalWorld who specialises in stories around TV, Film and Health. If you liked this article you can follow Sarah on X (Twitter) here. You can also sign up to her free weekly column in the NationalWorld newsletter bringing you the latest tv and film news every Thursday.