It was everything. In the end, I stopped looking at the horse pages, I stopped myself from following the races, never watched them on TV, saw no one, communicated with no one who was associated with racing or betting and slowly, inevitably, I began to rejoin the human race, accumulate things, jobs, income, holidays, a decent car. But I know something that any recovering alcoholic will acknowledge. I am duller for all that. I have lost a passion, an enthusiasm, I have been divorced from a cruel and harsh mistress and gained a weak simulcrum of existence with no highs or lows.
Normal people live like shadows.
I have become one of them. That's the way it is. Shadows cannot find their way back once they are weaned. To love a sport is to experience a lifelong passion for something bigger than yourself. To walk away from it must therefore be the opposite.