Sports

Fight of His Life

A Providence Bruin on the toughest opponent he's ever faced

East Side Monthly Magazine ·

Ever since Bobby Robins was five years old, he wanted nothing more than to be a hockey player. Growing up in the icy tundra of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, it seemed as if hockey was in his blood. After playing on various teams throughout his teens and early 20s, Robins signed a one-year NHL deal with the Ottawa Senators. He played the year for their minor league team but never got the call to the big club. That spawned his decision to play hockey overseas for a few years. Things were good; Robins was playing hockey professionally and living in a Slovenian ski lodge with his beautiful girlfriend. To an outsider, it would seem as if he had the perfect life. However, something was very wrong.

Although Robins was working out daily, eating for strength and appearing to be (by all outward accounts) the pinnacle of health, he was harboring a secret: his two-can-a-day chewing tobacco habit. “Now replace the word habit with drug addiction,” Robins says. “I couldn’t go an hour without filling my mouth.” He would sit and spit, in what seemed like an endless cycle. He knew how disgusting his habit was, referring to his brown-tinted spit as “molasses-colored slime.”

In addition to the negative affects on his health, Robins’ addiction also did a number on his wallet. He special ordered pouches from Sweden, spending “insane amounts of money.” Robins speaks of himself at that time as 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.”

Robins even hid the habit – as best he could – from his long-term girlfriend, in that mountain ski lodge nestled in the Julian Alps. At first, they lived “in perfect harmony” up there in those frosted peaks; while Robins was at practice, his girlfriend would hit the slopes. “The romance consumed us, as we crept around castles, high in the mountains,” he says. The months flew by, during what Robins calls the happiest time of his life.

But, his tobacco addiction got bad... really bad. Robins’ girlfriend watched him chew his life away; he chose to hold the empty water bottle instead of her, and it put pressure on their relationship. In the evenings, they began following separate routines: she going down to the lodge pool, and he retiring to the bathroom to take a long, hot bath, tobacco included. “I became obsessed with this ritual,” Robins says. He’d turn the lights off, place strategically lit candles throughout the small room and watch Master and Commander on his laptop. “Everything felt perfect, and I drifted off on heroic oceanic adventures in that dark, dank bathroom,” he says. One night, an hour into his ritual, Robins was surprised to hear a jingling of keys – his girlfriend had returned to their room earlier than usual.

Knowing that she would poke her head in the bathroom and say hello, Robins hurried to remove the tobacco from his mouth. As he had done countless times before, he plucked the chew wad from its resting spot; he tried to slide it into the water bottle but missed. The bathroom door swung open. “And then she saw it,” Robins says. “I was bathing in a black sea of tobacco juice. The grains were floating everywhere. To this day, I am pretty sure that she thinks that I actually used to bathe in tobacco juice, and that she just happened to catch me on this occasion.”

Unfortunately, things went from bad to worse. Robins stood in front of the bathroom mirror one morning and saw something behind his back molar. As he stood there, mouth frozen open in horror, he examined the dime-sized spot, “ghostly white in color, with small specs of red blood.” He ignored it for one full week. It got worse. “I knew it was cancer the moment I looked at it,” Robins says. “My fate was sealed. I would have half of my face cut off. I would become a monster.” He flushed all of his tobacco down the toilet. He quit that night.

Robins describes the next 72 hours as a blur; that’s the approximate length of time it takes the substance to exit the body. “The first 72 hours are the most dreadful, torturous, personal hell that you will ever know,” Robins asserts. “But, it will also let you know just how powerful the drug is. How is this drug, tobacco, not illegal? Nicotine is a weapon of mass destruction.”

Once the physical withdrawal symptoms passed, Robins began to tackle the mental addiction. “Slowly it got better. What started with an ear-blasting scream became a hushed whisper, smaller and smaller, until it wasn’t there anymore.”

One week after Robins faced that bathroom mirror, he stood in his doctor’s office. A small tube with a camera on its end was inserted into his mouth and down his throat to examine his trachea and esophagus. It was clear. Robins recalls the biopsy: “Next the doctor cut out a piece of the spot in question with a pair of scissors. It hurt. Then it was the waiting game.”

He hunkered down, and did everything he could to abstain from smoking; however, he no longer knew how to function in the world without tobacco. He felt as if he had to relearn everything. “There was no way I could possibly drive my car without tobacco in my mouth,” Robins says. “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?”

On day 13, Robins made a promise to himself – he would stick to quitting no matter what. Even if that meant he’d become a terrible hockey player. His fear was irrational but to him it was real. “My brain actually believed that tobacco enhanced my athletic performance. I truly believed that hockey would never be the same.” On day 15, he got a phone call from his doctor’s office. “I snapped the phone open in horror to hear my fate.” It wasn’t mouth cancer. He had a wisdom tooth that had emerged from beneath his gums and had caused irritation on his inner cheek. He now had a new lease on life.

However, as part of the quit, he had put on weight. “My fear of having my jaw removed now had reversed itself, as an extra chin appeared and jiggled and hung.” Robins says. It was off-season. He knew hockey certainly wasn’t an option at the weight he was at. “I pictured myself coming to training camp and being the fat guy. There’s one at every camp.” He could have given up right there, but he didn’t. Robins began a grueling athletic program in which he pushed himself in ways he never thought possible. “My body was hard,” he says, “and I could run like the wind.” He kept his eye on the prize: returning once again to the NHL.

Robins, who utilized the online support group QuitSmokeless.org to break his habit, now lives in Providence and plays for the Providence Bruins. At well over 600 days tobacco free, Robins continues to fight his way to the top. “Now at 30, I’m in the best shape of my life and playing the best hockey of my life too,” he says, knowing that he’s considered to be “old in hockey years.” Robins notes that, “Ironically, I’m in much better shape now than six years ago when I signed that NHL deal. I’m a different human and a different hockey player, better in every way.”

And yes, he’s still with the same girl. “She has been supportive through this whole quitting process and has always been there for me,” Robins explains.

Having grown up in a small town and having spent many years in mountainous, rural locations, the self-proclaimed “small town guy” is really enjoying the city life that Providence offers. “I don’t have my car out here, so I try to walk as much as I can,” Robins says. “What a great city.”

Although he’s only been in town a short time, the right wing already has plans for doing charity work here and is excited to make appearances throughout the city to encourage others to give up tobacco. If you’d like to cheer on Robins and the rest of his fellow Bruins, their season runs through April 15 – longer if they make it to the playoffs, which we hope they will.

hockey, providence bruins, east side, east side monthly, erin swanson