(Part 1)
I won't get into the back story of how I ended up in Europe in the first place; that will come at a later date. Today I won't talk about living in a ski lodge in the middle of the Julian Alps in Western Slovenia, feeling shamed and empty, hiding from the world and afraid to fail. I won't delve into any of that now.
I'll start where the new version of me started.
Sometime in May in the year 2010, is where the shift happened. I know the exact location where it happened; I know exactly what I was doing. It was in a parking lot, in a park, and I was running as fast as I could. What was I running from? I felt the shift, and it was as real as any crack of lightning or plate tectonics. It was a definite and tangible shift.
I'll get into all of that, but first you need some back story.
So who was I then, right before the shift?. I was a lost 28 year old kid; immature, selfish, and scared. I ravished in a two can a day chewing tobacco habit. Now replace the word “habit” with “drug addiction”. I didn't know what I wanted any more. Ever since I was five, I always knew what I wanted. I wanted to play hockey. And that was it. It made life simple. Hockey made life simple.
Now for the first time at age 28, I didn't know if I wanted to play any more. I didn't like who I had become. I couldn't go an hour without filling my mouth with nicotine-infused worm shit. Then I would sit and spit worm piss into an empty water bottle, and watch the molasses-colored slime slowly crawl down the side of the bottle, and pool at the bottom with a frothy layer of dead skin cells and taste buds.
But it wasn't just me now; I had Doll, and it must have broken her heart to watch me throw away my hard-earned money every day, throwing away my hard-earned life, caressing that half-filled spit bottle for more hours of the day than her.
And I knew that it broke her heart.
So I became a ninja master. My day consisted of balancing my nicotine intake, alternating between massive golf ball sized plugs of tobacco and discreet tiny pouches that I could hold way back in my mouth, way behind the last molar, and nobody knew but me. I special ordered these tiny pouches of Snus from Sweden, spending insane amounts of money because I could swallow the juices, and feed my addiction without anyone knowing.
It makes me sad to type this because it reminds me of the old version of me. I had achieved 100% saturation of nicotine in my blood and soul. It was sucking me lifeless, and then something happened.
“It can't be,” I tell myself as I stare into the bathroom mirror with my mouth wide open and gaping like some drug-fiend baboon. “Oh, god, please don't let this be happening.”
I saw the spot, back behind my last molar. It was the size of a dime, a perfect circle, ghostly-white in color, with small specs of red blood and puss emanating from it.
I knew it was cancer the moment I looked at it. So my fate was sealed. I would have half of my face cut off. I would become a monster. Children would stare and laugh at me; and fear me.
I ignored it for one week. It didn't go away. It got worse. The reds became deeper, these violent lesions.
After one week I made a promise to God.
“I'll quit, I'll quit right now.” I said aloud, staring into my own mirrored reflection. “I'll never touch that crap again, just please, please, let me be ok.”
I thought of Doll, and my family and friends. How could I let them down? I'd rather be dead than be a faceless monster. My flooding thoughts could not drown the fact that something big was happening, and that I could be in real trouble.
So I quit that night, I flushed it down the toilet. The next 72 hours are a blur. If you can make it 72 hours without any nicotine, it is officially out of your body. The first 72 hours are the most dreadful, torturous, personal hell that you will ever know. But it will let you know just how powerful the drug is. How is this drug not illegal??
Nicotine is a weapon of mass destruction.
Day one, hour five: I was a frail, withered worm in a puddle of doubt, depression, sadness, longing, deprivation, and exhaustion. All I knew at this point was that I needed sunflower seeds or I would legitimately go insane.
The gas station was three blocks from my house. I rode my bike. I knew that I was walking into a wolves' den with veal cutlets in my pockets, as the wall of nicotine was impossible to ignore. Every kind of tobacco in every flavor imaginable. Chew, cigarettes, cigars, nicotine gum, it was everywhere!
I walked in, and I was hallucinating. I decided to only look at the ground so I wouldn't have to make eye contact with the Dip Demon behind the counter. The floor was breathing. I'm pretty sure I was also limping, just because it hurt so bad. I felt the pain in every part of my body. Every cell inside of me craved nicotine. Every electron buzzed and glowed neon explosions of excitement because I was in the same building as pounds and pounds of tobacco. My cells could sense it.
I found the seeds and threw money on the counter.
I thought I said, “keep the change”, but I am sure that I spoke in tongues, something bizarre and unnatural.
I made it back to the apartment. At that point, I knew I was a junkie. But at the same time, it was such an enormous victory for me to leave my apartment on day one of my tobacco quit and go into a gas station and not break down and buy my drugs. Looking back, it seems like such a small accomplishment, so meaningless and trivial, but I might as well have tossed a gold medal around my neck, it was that profound.
“I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.”
Then I started talking to the cat. Poor Tom Tom, I'm so sorry that I took it out on you. I knew my fangs would be exposed at some point in the quit. I knew the hair on the back of my hands and forearms would grow into thick patches. My stained yellow claws cracked through the skin at the tips of my fingers. I knew I would become a monster. But I knew, most importantly, at all costs that I could not take it out on Doll. This was my mess, and I couldn't take it out on her.
She didn't even know about any of this. She had no idea of the cancer growing in my face. No idea that today was day one of my quit. All she knew is that she got up and went to work, just like any other day. And that her boyfriend was addicted to nicotine, just like...any other day.
I can only describe the feeling as this: I felt like I was going to explode and all my insides would splatter all over the room, but the explosion would not be a violent or sudden one, but a slow motion explosion, a bulging release of ripping sadness in a high-pitched hiss, like some coiled snake lurking behind the drywall, with a deep scarlet venom sack tucked away in the back of his mouth, back behind his razor fang, and it's filled with the most potent nicotine extract the world has ever known, cooked in antiquity by some satanic alchemist in a time forgotten, melted down from an ancient monolith that once mapped the stars and solstices.
“You're the worst cat in the world, prancing around like you own the place, piss off you four-legged shit factory,” as I give the most evil stare right through Tom Tom, and think that his black fur might be made from thin strands of tobacco leaves.
I'm sorry for all the terrible things I said to you Tom Tom, but thank you for deflecting all that negative energy away from Doll. I am forever indebted to you. And that is why I feed you as many cans of the expensive cat food that you can stuff into your stomach. That is why I buy you treats in flavors of salmon, and seafood delight, and chicken and bacon. That's why I let you get high on cat nip. That's why I love you.
I gauged the day in minutes and seconds on that first day of my quit. I can refrain from tobacco for one minute. I may think about tobacco 60 times in that one minute, but I can refrain from using. Slowly, a minute turned into an hour, and an hour turned into a day. I made it one full day without tobacco! It has been nearly eleven years since that has happened.
It was at the end of the first day, thirteen or so hours into my quit that I told Doll that I was trying to quit. Actually, I didn't want to tell her in the first place because of the countless failed attempts I had in the past. There is no worse feeling than telling a loved one with the most conviction that you are quitting tobacco, only to cave and resume your addiction one day later. It is a shameful thing.
It happened at the dinner table. I cooked a mediocre meal, but a gourmet feast with all things considered. I sat awkwardly across from Doll and didn't say much. Tom Tom came to beg for food and brushed against my leg.
“Maybe I'll leave the front door open tonight, and we'll never see you again, you vile skunk rat.” Tom Tom was staring directly into my eye balls as I finished the sentence. I looked up toward Doll and she had a look of disgust on her face. She didn't know how to react. I rarely say anything remotely mean, especially to our cat. She just started at me and shook her head.
“Are you serious?” still shaking her head back and forth, her mouth slightly opened in disbelief.
I apologized, and decided that it was time to fess up.
She was excited to hear that I was quitting, but she was far from ecstatic. She wasn't getting her hopes up, and I couldn't blame her. This quit was different though. This quit had conviction. That conviction hid behind my back left molar and took the form of a bloody meteor crashing into my world. Doll didn't know about the cancer and the impending meteor impact and my inevitable extinction. I didn't have the heart to tell her.
I made it through day two. It got easier. I just kept eating and eating. I destroyed Taco Bell. I ate until I couldn't eat any more. I didn't care how fat I got. I wasn't thinking about that. I didn't care about hockey, or where I would play, or body composition testing at training camp, none of that mattered. All that mattered was the quit. My lifestyle afforded me the luxury of making the quit my priority. I didn't have a job to worry about. It was the off season. Maybe it was my last season. I didn't know at that point. All I knew was to get through every single minute of every day without putting tobacco into my mouth, keeping nicotine out of my blood.
Day three was a breeze. “I can definitely do this. Get through today, and it's all smooth sailing.”
Day four almost killed me. But I read all over the quit forums, I googled and googled. It said 72 hours, and it was out of your system. Well, this might have been the dreaded death rattle. That snake emerged from a nest of pink insulation inside the wall, and slithered out from the electrical socket behind the refrigerator. It curled up on the kitchen table and cocked his head, exposing a hood and two translucent fangs, dripping hot acid, and burning through the carpet and floor joists, disintegrating foundation footings and pillars, burning the house down and leaving a pile of rubble. And I was buried underneath this mass for 24 hours on day four. It was dark in there, and I couldn't move. I could hear the snake lurking in the darkness. I heard his whispers.
“Just one more. One more taste. You've made it this far. Why not treat yourself? If you can make it three days, you can make it three years. Just chew when you want to, on your terms. One more taste.”
I closed my eyes, and went somewhere else. When I woke up, it was day 5. A heavy fog had been lifted off of me. I began to see the world in a different light, with different eyes; but the fight was far from over.
After three days (four days in my case) the nicotine is out of your blood stream, and you are over the main physical withdrawal symptoms. From this point on, it is a mental game. After eleven years of nicotine abuse, there is no doubt that you are mentally addicted as well. Of course there are shocking moments of physical longing for tobacco called craves, and this is from old nicotine that is stored in fat deposits in the body. But they are manageable.
Slowly, day by day, it gets better. What started with an ear-blasting scream, becomes a hushed whisper, smaller and smaller, until it isn't there any more.
You learn to ignore the voices. You evolve.
That is where I am today.
October 5, 2011. Today I am officially 500 days clean from nicotine in any form. Cold turkey. I looked the demon in the eye 500 days ago.
You may be wondering what happened with the cancer, or how this has anything to do with hockey fights in the minor leagues.
(It has everything to do with it.)
Two weeks into my quit, I came clean with Doll and told her about the spot in my mouth. I cried. I just cried and opened my mouth. She looked at it, and said we needed to show my mom, who is a nurse. We went home and showed my mom, and she said we should see a doctor. The doctor looked at it, and said we needed a biopsy. I secretly prayed that the doctor would look at it and say something like, “not to worry, Bobby, it's just a canker sore, now go get em kiddo!”
But I knew.
The doctor maneuvered a small tube with a camera on the end of it into my mouth and down my throat to examining my esophagus and trachea. All clear.
Next, he cut out of piece of the spot in question with a metal pair of scissors. It hurt. I winced in pain and my eyes welled up with salty tears.
Then it was the waiting game.
(Part 2)
I was one week in. One week quit, and it would be another five days until I heard the results of my biopsy. My mouth hurt, and I found myself clenching my jaw and clicking it back and forth like some back ally crackhead jonesing for a fix. So this was my new nervous tic; somehow it made the pain bearable.
All I wanted to do was chew. Those first three or four days were dead and gone, but now there was a different feeling, an emptiness, a longing, a void where nothing existed except for that black hole. I could taste it in my saliva, misting up from under my tongue in hints of wintergreen. It was in that same spot, under my tongue where the void started, a tiny grain that grew and grew every waking hour, first emerging from my mouth, bubbling out over my chin, and swelling and ballooning up around my head, until my entire body swam in that murky abyss. I slowly sunk down deep into ink-black water, until there was nothing there.
Doll noticed it too. I wasn't there when she looked at me, but somewhere far back from behind my dead eyes, I was fighting for my life, I was in there somewhere, clawing my way back, back to her and back to Tom Tom.
I no longer knew how to function. Tobacco has consumed my life for eleven years, and every activity, facet, or turn, involved tobacco. A new version of me was in the works, but I had to relearn how to operate in the world.
This was the old version of me:
Wake up, chew. Breakfast, coffee, new chew. Drive to rink chewing. Get ready for hockey chewing. Chew after practice. Lunch, chew. Chew all afternoon. Dinner, chew. Chew all night. Goodnight kiss on the razor lips of the Dip Demoness.
There was no way I could possibly drive my car without tobacco in my mouth. How on earth could I play hockey without chewing in the locker room, spitting brown gobs of juice into the trash can as I tape my stick and talk of the latest NHL tough-guy fisticuffs.
That's when I realized that every part of me for the past eleven years was intertwined with tobacco. I realized then that I had used tobacco as a crutch, a cancerous cure-all, against anxiety. Everything was fine as long as I had poisonous leaves wedged between my lip and gums. I trembled on day ten as I sat hopeless in my bedroom and wondered how on earth I would be able to keep this up. How would I deal with the anxiety? And what of the flashing thoughts and racing heartbeats, the beads of sweat and the python grip around my chest cavity, and the paranoia; chew had simply always been there to get me through it.
And that's when I discovered the greatest deceit I have ever known, a thick and pungent lie. Tobacco had tricked me. It was never the cure for my anxiety, it was the cause of it. I expected the worst as I put myself out there into the world, starting with small tasks; a trip to the grocery store where the old version of me would have been crippled with anxiety and fear; now somehow I felt calmer, not perfect, but better, getting better.
Had tobacco really tricked me into believing that I needed it to appease the anxiety, when all along it was tobacco that caused it? I was betrayed. Then I got pissed off. This was the jet fuel, the propulsion of anger that launched me over another significant hurdle horizon. Yes, my life would be different without tobacco, and it might take some time go get over it, and feel normal again, but there was no doubt that my life would be better without it.
And in that helpless haze of the first two weeks, I had my doubts and concerns that maybe I would always feel this unsettling and empty feeling inside, that this would be my badge to carry for the rest of my life. But I didn't care, I could live with it, I could be empty. Better to be empty than full of nicotine, full of fear, and full of shit.
So I made a promise to myself on day thirteen that I would stick with my quit no matter what. Even if that meant that I would become the worst hockey player in the world (my brain actually believed that tobacco enhanced my athletic performance). I truly believed that hockey would never be the same, and that I would live out my days, a haunted man, living in this dark void, a perma-tweeker, hollow and cavernous.
Some synapses and neurons flickered and twitched in my head and sent a current through every corridor of my body, as a promise rang true that I would keep my oath, and the notion solidified into a sturdy cement, that if I stayed quit, I would somehow get a free pass from this whole cancer scare, and the slate would be wiped clean, the old forest burned to ashes, as crawling greens and sprouting buds reach up toward the sun, new life, an old cycle done, a new cycle begun.
On day fifteen, the phone call came. I felt the vibration in my pocket as I was doing dishes, and thinking to myself how amazing it was that I could actually do dishes without tobacco in my mouth.
“I can do this. I can. I will.”
It was an unknown number and my heart turned to sand. My tongue tasted metallic. My trembling hand gripped the phone as it hovered above a silver sink and dirty plates. I froze and saw my reflection in millions of tiny soap bubbles, each sphere containing my destiny, and each sphere a different outcome. It was in the tiny bubble that clung to the side of a half-submerged coffee mug that I saw the monster, with half a face, and a plastic hole in my throat that bubbled and gurgled, a greasy spout, and there was Doll, nestling her soft lips on the hole in my trachea, and a coy caress of her strawberry tongue on plastic, a warm good night kiss and lovers' embrace, and I saw the horror on her face as she looked down at me, and I had no jaw, no teeth, no tongue, just eyes and a nose, and a leathered skull of tight-skinned hide, with nightcrawler scars and wrinkles and a shiny plastic hole in my neck, where I hid small pouches of tobacco deep inside that crevice and off to the side so Doll wouldn't notice as she kissed my new robot mouth.
I snapped the phone open in horror, to get it over with, to hear my fate. And an angel's voice on the other end showed me a different soap bubble. I entered that sphere and never looked back. It was in that sphere, under a fork with leftover marinara crusted on the second prong, that I saw the new version of me, a cancer free version of me, a nicotine free version of me, and a version of me that I never knew was possible. This was the cusp between boyhood and manhood, it was the cusp between slavery and freedom, damnation and redemption, and it was more clear than anything I had ever known.
I saw a version of me that no longer even thought about tobacco. It wasn't even a factor anymore. I knew that I would get there someday, but for the moment on day fifteen of my quit, I was satisfied to feel unbalanced, irritable, and menacing, knowing that someday I would feel like the pure version of me, and bask in that enlightened state as I live out my days.
All I knew was that I did not have mouth cancer. And everything would work itself out in time.
What I did have was a wisdom tooth that had emerged from somewhere beneath my gums, and poked out at an angle which caused rubbing and irritation on my inner cheek. It seemed ridiculous that this whole ordeal, this cancer scare and two week waiting game, was the result of a stray wisdom tooth.
If that jutting tooth of wisdom does not serve as the most poignant metaphor known to man, I don't know what does.
In a lazy haze of nitrous oxide, I sat back as the dentist gripped the tooth and twisted it out. I heard the crunching of enamel deep inside my cranium, but I didn't care. The ceiling was laughing, and so was I.
Now it was my end of the bargain. The fates had done their part and sent me on a path toward freedom, but how easy it would be to stray, to leave the sturdy clay and cobblestones and wander into the grass and forest where beasts lounge and graze. Now it was a test. I had to hold up my end.
The whispers and moans were there, from out in the dark reaches of the forest.
“No cancer, no worries. Just have one to celebrate. Keep a can in the top drawer for a rainy day. You deserve it after everything you've been through.”
For seven days, I did absolutely nothing but refrain from putting tobacco in my mouth. Even at week three it took every ounce of me. It was certainly easier than the previous weeks, but I was beaten and battered, and needed a spark, some flash of inspiration and guidance to show me where to go, what to do, and how to do it.
That lightning struck on week four in a miraculous clap. It changed something inside of me. It changed everything inside of me. I left the house at 10:47am and returned at noon, a different person all together with a clear vision and a clear path set out before me.
I knew exactly what I had to do.
(Part 3)
That one month milestone spoke the loudest to me, and I listened closely. “If I can just do this twelve more times, it will be one year without tobacco.” It seemed like a lifetime away, but for the first time, the possibility was there; the glimpse was real. I still didn't know what I wanted to do, who I was, or where I was headed. Things ended sour in Slovenia that April in 2010. I got stiffed on a bunch of money from the team and there was little I could do. Aside from flying back over the ocean, armed to the teeth, and demanding my last paycheck, I was pretty much stuck to bicker and complain and run up my credit card. Things work differently over there. A contract doesn't hold its weight in gold, or Euros, or anything.
The allure of Europe and the romance of leapfrogging from country to country quickly grows thin when you don't get paid for your work. Looking back on that whole ordeal now, I realize that it was just a part of the plan for me. I needed to leave there with a sour taste in my mouth. I needed to hit rock bottom. I needed that cancer scare. I needed to be right where I was.
I had put on weight. Diet was not an option during that first month of my quit. I didn't care though. But it really wasn't the frequent fast food stops that caused it. It was the sunflower seeds. Apparently if you eat ungodly amounts of sunflower seeds, the body has to do something with all that “good fat” and store it somewhere. My body happened to store it in my gut and chin. The fear of having my jaw removed now had reversed itself, as an extra chin appeared and jiggled and hung. As I stood and looked at this new puffy version of me, I gripped and pulled at my stomach fat, and estimated fifteen pounds, maybe twenty. Hockey certainly was no longer an option, at least not at this weight. I pictured myself coming into training camp, and being the fat guy; there is one at every camp. I've been that guy before. I couldn't be that guy again. I'd rather not even show up.
I decided to start jogging. I threw on my shoes, and double knots later, I was thumping down the sidewalk, looking out at vast Lake Michigan, a perfect mirror stretching out endless and eternal, off to distant shores, where different versions of me thrived and dwelled. Who would I become? I felt something stirring, something moving, watching me from the shadow that tailed me on this run. That black hole now formed the exact shape of my body and followed my every move. I ran from it, but it tailed me fast, with precision and patience. I ran from it as long as I could. I reflected on the past month and couldn't belive that I had made it thirty days; it was a miracle.
I must have made it ten minutes before I walked home, shamed and embarrassed, with a splitting side ache, and drenched in sweat. It was then that I decided I would no longer use my quit as an excuse to eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I would tighten up the diet. I would start working out. And I would run everyday.
Over the next two weeks, I ran and ran and ran. One mile, then two, then three. I could feel something different happening inside of me. I felt my blood flowing smoothly through silky blue veins, no longer congested with bloody nicotine sludge. I felt the oxygen in my blood. I felt every velvet vein and capillary breathing oxygen, and a low-pitched hum echoed down endless artery tunnels to the ebb and flow of rejuvenation, of reanimation. I felt the June breeze rushing at my face as I put one foot in front of the other, and no longer feeling fatigue in my legs, no more burning in my lungs, just a free-floating feeling of freedom. I felt fast. Volatile.
On these runs, I drifted off, and was forced to relive different moments of my life and each of the significant epochs had a common theme: tobacco. I was somehow forced to see my addiction as it truly was. This vision was unaffected by desire or longing or pain; I felt none of that as I ran. I felt very little as I flew around the streets in our small fishing community on the shores of the Great Lake, but my mind was alive and pulsating.
I flashed back to four years prior; it seemed like a lifetime ago. I had just crossed the border into Canada and was on my way to training camp with the Ottawa Senators. I was fresh off an Entry Level NHL contract with a great big world in front of me, ready for greatness and glory, and fueled by my past success during my senior year at college, and all the work that went into that cathartic season. This was it. This was the big time.
“Any alcohol or tobacco products?” The border guard looked suspiciously at me and my gaudy, brand-new 10mpg black SUV, with shiny chrome wheels and saddle-brown leather seats. That's how I spent my signing bonus, on a monster truck, gasoline, sushi, and chew.
“Just one can of chewing tobacco, sir.” And I felt like a man, a tobacco spittin' manly man.
“What is the purpose of your visit to Canada?”
“I signed with the Ottawa Senators, and I am attending training camp.”
I pulled into the parking lot at Scotia Bank Place, and looked up at this giant building. It looked like the Colosseum, and I pictured myself an ancient warrior, ready to die, ready to fight, ready for anything. And while my mouth said those words, somewhere deep in a wrinkled fold in my brain, tucked underneath a glob of grey matter, I knew that I was scared. I was so scared to fight. I was ready to work as hard as I could, but deep in my soul, there was the groan, and it spoke in phrases of fear, failure, loss, terror, embarrassment, letdown.
I cracked open the can of Grizzly Wintergreen, and the hissing stopped; it all went away. The only sound was brown saliva hitting the bottom of an empty styrofoam coffee cup. That's the sound I knew. That was my music; my twisted symphony. I was running low on tobacco, and an addict is always prepared. I needed a fresh stock pile for day one of training camp in the morning. I stopped at a gas station close to the hotel, and I was horrified as I stood in front of the clerk, under fluorescent lights, and glazed donut eyes from the eight-hour drive from Lowell.
“You guys don't have any Grizzly?” I said this half as a question and half as a panicked statement.
“Sorry, man, only Skoal and Copenhagen.”
If that wasn't enough, the cans of tobacco were half the size of the American cans. My luck couldn't get any worse. But then I discovered that a can half the size costs double what it does in America. I bought two, and ended up buying two or three every single day I was in Ottawa.
So on my first night in Ottawa, with NHL training camp opening up in the morning, I sat in my hotel room watching movie previews, and sat utterly bitter that I had to chew Skoal, and cursing the texture of this terrible-tasting tobacco, and wondering how on earth I would make it for a month on this stuff. I needed my Grizzly; I would have paid anything for it. I would have done anything for it.
Instead of being 100% focused and prepared to pour out every single ounce of me into an NHL training camp, instead of pep talking myself, and filling every atom with positivity energy, and convincing myself to face my fears and fight, fight everyone; instead of inspiration and belief and perfect performance, I worried about tobacco. I was fixated on it, and talked to NHL veterans at camp who I spotted with tobacco in their lips and bickered and complained about the status of these tiny cans up here in Canada. I didn't ask them for advice on how to stick in the NHL. I didn't ask opinions on what I can do to improve my game or what I can do to be an impact player in the best league on planet earth. I just sat there and chewed, spitting juice with those veterans and complaining about textures of tobacco leaves on the mucus lining of our lips.
On the last day of camp, I got cut and sent down to the minors, and as I crossed the border into America, a glowing smile slid across my face knowing that as soon as that stamp hit my passport, I could put a can of Grizzly into my mouth and leave it in there for hours and hours, bathing in that juice.
I was still running when I realized I was burping up vomit and spitting it onto the sidewalk. How long had I been running? I never had this kind of endurance before, and this is only a week of working out, and I'm fat and out of shape. How can this be possible? Every question that I asked myself had a logical answer. Tobacco affected my cardiovascular system for years and years. Now there was no doubt about it. That was always the knock against me, that I could always be in better shape, that I should be in better shape. I worked so hard, harder than anyone I knew, but it seemed like I had to work twice as hard, while for others it came so easy. I skated just as fast or ran sprints on sweltering summer tracks right there with the best of them, but I always noticed that I breathed a little heavier, and recovered a little later.
Of course I had known it all along, and heard the studies of tobacco and it's effect on athletes. But I always bought into that vile lie: “hey, it's better than smoking cigarettes.” Shame on me.
An hour into my run, I ended up at Sunset Park and looked out down the hill at the baseball fields and jungle gyms. I went back to my childhood and saw the 12 year old version of me at hockey camp in Minnesota where I had my first taste of tobacco. I hid in the bathroom stall and opened that can of Kodiak and knew I was doing something terribly wrong. But somehow there was a thrill in it. I smelled the ripe odor of wintergreen and it stung my eyes and nostrils. The tobacco looked shiny like the scales of some reptile, moist and enticing. I pinched a tiny ball of tobacco grains in between my pointer finger and thumb and awkwardly stuffed the snuff in my mouth. The burning was immediate. It hurt so bad, and I left it in as long as I could. After thirty seconds, I could not take it anymore and brushed it out of my mouth, staining my fingers and spitting it into the toilet. The room was spinning now, a cyclone dance of swirling tiles and toilet paper . I closed my eyes and let the drug take me away. I sold my soul that day, and I didn't even know it. The Dip Demon stirred, and awoke from deep within the septic tank and slithered up the sump pump, groaning and hungry, ready to feast. I fell in love with that feeling, and over the next five years I would dabble in tobacco whenever I had the chance, until age 17 when I became a full-blown addict.
I should have been on that tire swing instead or balancing on the teeter totter. I should have been playing TV tag or ghosts in the graveyard, with ollie ollie oxen frees and red rover red rovers ringing radiant laughter all around, not hiding in some bathroom stall and putting the most addictive drug known to man into my 12-year-old body. That shouldn't have been me. I became a slave early on, ensnared in that terrible trap, and now at age 28, in the middle of this park in June, I felt a rage boil up and swell like lava inside of me. I wanted to be done with it. I wanted tobacco out of my brain. It was out of my blood finally, but I needed it gone. Make it disappear. Please. I clenched my teeth and started sprinting back and forth across the parking lot as fast as I could possibly run. I was floating on a cloud of desperation and hate. Back and forth fifty yards at a time, and that's when I felt it. I finally felt the pain, the fatigue, the tiny razors in my lungs and muscle fibers. This was no longer a casual trot around town, jogging with my ipod arm band and waving to retirees on tandem bikes. This was anger incarnate. It was a spiteful sprint.
And then something happened. I reached my wall, the end, the barrier of how far I could push my legs and lungs. My body was close to shutting down. And then I said something that I had not said in three years, certainly not since I left the minor leagues to play in Europe where there was no fighting, where I felt safe and comfortable, where I had given up on my dreams all together. It was a phrase that I had forgotten. I said it sophomore year in college when I first started to believe. I started saying it everyday, repeating it, my mantra. It could get me through anything. No workout could defeat me back then, no sprint was too demanding. When I said the words, and I went to a different place, a different level, a higher consciousness, a world where belief is the pulse of a heroic heart.
“I can make it to the NHL.”
I paused and slowly started to remember. Then I sprinted again.
“I will make it to the NHL.”
“I can make it to the NHL. I will make it to the NHL.” How many times had to said this to myself, each time believing it completely, and repeating it in perfect cadence to any strenuous activity. This mantra once made it possible for me push the limits of what I thought was humanly possible. There was magic in it. It was magic.
“I can make it to the NHL. I will make it to the NHL.”
I ran back and forth repeating this phrase over and over, and I pushed through a membrane, I clawed through it, and I blacked out, and when I finally collapsed, and looked up at puffy white clouds in the sky, I was not same human being. There was no sound. I was watching something up there in the sky, with squinted eyes burning with sweat and fury. Maybe that black hole that followed me for eleven years rose up and fizzled off into space, evaporating into nothing. I looked to my right and to my left and saw no shadow, I was directly under the sun on this summer solstice that marked my awakening and rebirth into a new world with new potential and possibilities.
The old limits and limitations of what I thought the old version of me could accomplish were shattered, smashed, and annihilated. And born from that cataclysm was a new life form with an entirely new life force, and I was ready.
If I can quit tobacco I can do anything. I walked home with legs quaking and swollen shins, repeating my mantra:
“I can make it to the NHL. I will make it to the NHL.”
I saw some version myself in a blue uniform, and I was fighting. Fighting for my life. Fighting for my family. Fighting for honor and redemption. Fighting for real.
* * *
Thanks for reading, and I hope these words inspire you to quit, stay quit, and chase your dreams. Please check out my blog at www.MinorLeagueFightNight.com if you want to read a pro's prose and get a glimpse inside my head. Thanks to QuitSmokeless.org and to Matt; this site saved my life. Much love and thanks all my fellow quit brothers (Jimmy Two Vees, Robbie One Two Three, O-Man, Chip, and the rest of the gangsters who drop by the Hall of Heroes).
-Bobby Robins 11.3.2011