How a 41-year-old ex-vaper created the device that's helped 22,500+ men finally break free — and why he almost didn't make it long enough to see it launched
His dad never met his grandchildren.
If you've been vaping for years and can't stop...
If you switched from cigarettes thinking you'd solved it — and ended up worse...
If there's a part of you that knows, deep down, that something needs to change before it changes for you...
Then this is the story you need to read.
Because the man who built HÜM isn't a scientist in a lab coat.
He's a bloke from Sheffield who watched his dad die — and then almost followed him.
James Carter grew up in a terraced house in Sheffield.
His dad, Alan, was a steelworker. Smoked 30 a day since he was 17.
"It was just what men did," James says. "After work. At the pub. At half-time. It was everywhere."
Sheffield, 1980s. "It was just what men did."
James started smoking at 16. Not because he was hooked. Because his mates did.
By 22, he was on 20 a day.
By 28, he'd tried to stop four times.
He failed every time. Patches. Gum. Willpower. Cold turkey.
None of it stuck.
In 2016, James got a call from his mum.
His dad, Alan — 62 years old — had been diagnosed with lung cancer.
"He'd been coughing for years. We all just assumed it was a smoker's cough. It wasn't."
Alan died 14 months later.
He never met James's first son.
James's boy was born three weeks after the funeral.
"My dad should have been in that delivery room. He should have held him. He never got to."
James stood in the hospital car park that night — his newborn son upstairs, his father in the ground — and smoked a cigarette.
"I hated myself for it. But I couldn't stop."
— James Carter, Founder of HÜMTwo years after his father died, James made a decision.
He was going to quit. For real. For his son.
He switched to vaping.
"I told myself it was the smart move. No tar. No carbon monoxide. I'd read all the NHS stuff. I thought I'd cracked it."
For a while, he believed it.
Then COVID hit. James started working from home.
And everything changed.
"There was no more going outside for a smoke break. No office. No colleagues watching. Just me and the vape, all day, every day."
By 2021, James was going through three pods a day.
He was vaping at his desk. On the sofa. In the kitchen. In bed.
He was taking in more nicotine in a morning than his dad used to smoke in an entire day.
"Not just fast. Wrong. Like something inside me was misfiring."
He lay completely still. Didn't want to wake his wife, Sarah.
He was 40 years old, lying in the dark, wondering if he was having a heart attack.
"My son is four. If something happens to me tonight, he grows up without a dad. Exactly like my dad's grandchildren."
— James Carter, Founder of HÜMHe didn't go to A&E.
But the next morning, he went to his GP.
The doctor was direct.
"He said: 'You don't have a smoking problem anymore. You have a vaping problem. And vaping problems are harder to break, because there's nothing stopping you doing it every five minutes. You've built a deeper loop than any cigarette ever could.'"
A deeper loop.
Those words stayed with James.
James tried everything his GP suggested.
Champix — a bad reaction left him unable to sleep for two weeks.
Patches — gone within three days of a stressful work call.
Allen Carr's book — read it twice. Agreed with every word. Still vaped.
"I understood the problem perfectly. I just couldn't stop."
So he started digging deeper. Six months reading every piece of research he could find on addiction, habit formation, and behavioural science.
He spoke to addiction psychologists in Manchester and London.
He found a researcher in Paris working on clinical aromatherapy — the science of how specific natural scents interact with the brain's craving centre.
And slowly, a picture started forming.
James wasn't a product designer.
He was a 40-year-old man from Sheffield with a background in mechanical engineering and a desperate need to solve a problem.
"I didn't want to build a company. I wanted to stop. And then I wanted other men like me to be able to stop."
He started with a simple question: what if, instead of replacing the nicotine, you replaced the ritual?
The gesture. The inhale. The moment of pause.
Give the brain's loop somewhere clean to go — with no nicotine, no vapour, no chemicals — and let the body handle the rest.
He spent 18 months working with a small team of designers and aromatherapy researchers. Dozens of prototypes. Hundreds of test draws.
"My wife Sarah was my first tester. She'd been vaping too. She quit in three weeks."
The HÜM Stick. Battery-free. Nothing to vaporise.
"Then her sister. Then three of my mates from Sheffield. One of them had been smoking since he was 15."
"All of them free within 30 days."
That's when James knew he had something.
He called it HÜM — because of the slow breath out.
"When you exhale properly, slowly, through the device — you hum. That breathing pattern alone calms the nervous system. It's not an accident. It's the whole point."
— James Carter, Founder of HÜMHÜM is not a vape. There is no nicotine. No vapour. No battery.
It's a reusable device — stainless steel and wood — that you draw through exactly like you would a vape.
Inside, instead of liquid and chemicals, there's a natural botanical flavour core. Infused with essential oils — mint, strawberry, mango and more — that clinical research shows calm the brain's craving centre directly.
The loop fires. HÜM gives it somewhere clean to go.
Your hands have something. Your mouth has something. Your brain registers: that moment is handled.
And your body gets nothing to depend on. No nicotine hit. No chemical reward. Nothing to build a new addiction around.
| Everything else ❌ | HÜM Feel Starter Pack ✅ |
|---|---|
| Patches — replace nicotine, ignore the loop entirely | Targets the hand-to-mouth ritual and the trigger loop directly |
| Gum — same problem. Plus the wind. Nobody talks about the wind. | 100% nicotine-free — nothing for your body to get hooked on |
| Allen Carr — asks your willpower to do all the heavy lifting | Behavioural science + clinical aromatherapy — works with your brain |
| Cold turkey — nearly impossible when the loop runs this deep | 89% of users feel the urge fade within 30 days |
| Champix — prescription required, bad reactions common | Zero nicotine, zero diacetyl, zero formaldehyde. No side effects. |
Everything James wished he'd had when he was lying awake at 2:47AM:
feelhum.com · Free UK delivery · Ships in 3 days
James launched HÜM in 2023.
"I still get messages. Blokes my age, a bit older, a bit younger. They all say the same thing: patches didn't work, gum didn't work, cold turkey didn't work — and then something about HÜM was just different."
"What's different is that we're finally treating the right problem."
James has one photograph on his desk. It's him and his dad. Alan. Sheffield, 1994. James is about 10. His dad has a cigarette in his hand.
"He didn't know what that habit was going to cost him. He didn't have the information. He didn't have the tools."
"I built HÜM so that other men do."
— James Carter, Founder of HÜMRight now, HÜM is offering 40% off the Feel Starter Pack — bringing it to just £49.99 (from £82.99).
Stock runs low when demand spikes. And after a recent feature, it has.
feelhum.com
"I'm 47. Smoked for 20 years, vaped for 5. My dad died of COPD. I knew I was heading the same way. HÜM is the first thing that's actually worked. Eight weeks free."
"Tried patches, gum, Champix. Nothing. My son asked me once why I always smell like sweets. That hit hard. Three months with HÜM. He's stopped asking."
"The 3AM heart thing happened to me too. Twice. I'm 43. HÜM is the only thing that's given my hands and my brain something else to do. Six weeks. Still going."
You can keep doing what you're doing.
Or you can do what James did — and build a way out.
He built it for himself. He built it for his son.
He built it for men who don't want the next generation to grow up the same way his did.
"I didn't build HÜM because I'm a scientist. I built it because I was a 40-year-old man lying in the dark next to my wife, trying not to wake her, wondering if my kids were going to grow up without a dad. The same way my dad's grandchildren did."
— James Carter, Founder, HÜMor 3 interest-free payments of £16.63 with Klarna
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