'I was just staring into a black hole with no clue how to get out'

It is a beautiful day in Charlotte, US. The sun shines gloriously through a window in the house shared by Kevin Tobin and his wife Caitlin. One day earlier a tornado passed through the city. Things had been dark, menacing and miserable. Now, everything looks different, brighter, better. Tobin can confirm life is sometimes like that.

"You don't ever really aim to end up in Charlotte," says the 34-year-old, who has ended up in Charlotte and is happy to be there. There was once a time, not so long ago, when happiness was a total stranger.

That time started in the second half of his stint as a Lambourn-based jump jockey. It was the backend of 2007. At the backend of 2008 the son of Clonmel came horribly close to taking his own life.

He came similarly close one month later. Tobin’s mental health was in a perilous state. Now, across the Atlantic, he is in a better place and is seeking to help others suffering in a way he recognises all too well.

Tobin is working towards becoming a licensed addiction counsellor in North Carolina. After retiring as a professional jockey in January 2009 – a Uttoxeter win on the Charlie Mann-trained Mr Big provided a perfect send-off – he became a student, a key part of his education coming at the Hazelden Centre in Minnesota. He is learning again and hoping he might get the chance to take on a PhD research project, his chosen subject being how people fall into substance abuse and addictive behaviour following a traumatic life transition.

Kevin smiling alongside his wife Caitlin Tobin

Tobin, the winner of 25 races and a conditional jockeys' hands and heels series champion, does his studying at the Central Piedmont Community College in his new home city. A ten-minute drive from its busy hub is total tranquility and neighbourhoods full of houses attached to long, winding driveways lined with oak trees. Doors are left unlocked, everyone knows the name of the postman and a young Irishman enjoys an unusually warm February morning, sitting in the sunlight that pours generously into the Tobins' three-bedroom abode.

"Life is pretty good right now," he says, his cheeriness helped by being married to the New Jersey-born Caitlin. She once lived in Oxford while he was a resident of Lambourn. He did not know that at the time but he did know he was miserable and he wants to talk about it. He wants to talk about mental health and he wants to talk about suicide, a subject on so many minds since the tragic recent death of former jump jockey James Banks at the age of 36.

When Tobin starts to tell the story of where things went wrong, he begins with a day when things went right. At Ascot on November 3, 2007, he partnered Kanad to victory for Mann in a handicap hurdle worth nearly £50,000 to the winner. It could have been a springboard to future success and it should have left him buzzing. Instead, he was left desolate the following day when his eyes and brain fixed on an innocent quote from the winning trainer, who expressed regret that Noel Fehily had been unable to take the mount.

Kanad gives Kevin Tobin his biggest success in the saddle at Ascot in November 2007Credit: Mark Cranham

"Looking back it was a fantastic day but all I took from it at the time was Charlie's disappointment," says Tobin.

"That was reasonably early in my mental health decline. I remember another day at Kempton. Richard Johnson and Paddy Brennan were sat in front of me. Paddy was looking through the entries in the Racing Post, turned to Richard and said: 'Dickie, I don't know where my next winner is coming from.'

"I felt it like a gut punch. I could have looked at the same page and not known where my next ride was coming from. By the time I got home I had manifested a scenario whereby Richard and Paddy, who were so far ahead of me in the pecking order, were also struggling. That convinced me where I was must be the absolute pits.

"There was also a day at Hereford. All the big names were in the weighing room. I looked around and thought I wouldn't swap positions with any of them. I had convinced myself I was unworthy and not good enough to do any of their jobs. I actually rode a winner the same day but winners had stopped mattering.

"I lacked emotional awareness and wasn't able to cope with those feelings. Racing constantly compares one person against another, one horse against another. I would do that, day in, day out. It made me angry, lonely and frustrated. I was just staring into a black hole with no clue how to get out."

Tobin yearned for a means of escape but chose the wrong route. By late December 2008, the then 23-year-old was struggling and suffering. His mood was not helped by a Sunday trip to Catterick, where he finished sixth for Roger Fisher on a 25-1 outsider.

"The horse ran okay but Roger wasn't happy," says Tobin. "I walked back to the weighing room and told myself this was probably my final ride. Robert Lucey-Butler drove us back and dropped me home. I got out of the car and said goodnight to him. In my head I was saying: 'Goodbye, you'll never see me again.'

"I got in my car, drove to Charlie's yard and picked up a hosepipe and a stable rubber. Then I headed to a wooded area just outside Lambourn. It was a place I would sometimes go to spend time with myself. What I liked about it was there was no mobile phone reception, but to get into that area you needed to go through a gate that was always open. This time it was closed.

"I had to get out of the car to open the gate. By the time I got back into the car my phone was ringing. It was my dad. He was just calling to check how the day had gone. He had no clue I was planning to put the hosepipe into the car and fall asleep. I might be wrong but I think when he reads this it will be his first window into exactly what happened that day."

Their conversation saved him.

Kevin Tobin with his father, John, on a day's racing at Leopardstown

"We chatted for about an hour," recalls Tobin. "I was talking more about stopping riding than stopping life but he said I should give it another 24 hours. A couple of days down the line I felt a bit better but the feeling didn't last. When you're in that sort of space you become the villain in your own head. If I picked up the phone to tell my dad about things, I told myself I was annoying him or letting him down. I felt my circle of friends had their own issues. I was genuinely convinced I was a burden."

Shortly after the first brush with suicide, Tobin contacted the Racing Post to announce he was planning to retire over the coming days. He was brutally frank. "I genuinely feel I wasn't good enough and that I'm not good enough," he said in that interview, adding: "When I've looked at myself pushing a horse, I've felt for a long time that I don't really look like a jockey."

Yet he did look like a jockey. Tobin had made contact with the trade paper for a reason. It was part of a plan.

Casting his mind back, he says: "For three months before I finished riding I tried desperately to put on weight. I wanted to be able to say I was stopping because I was too heavy. Then, three weeks before things were at their worst, I didn't eat a single morsel of food for seven days, hoping I would get sick and someone would step in to make the decision for me. Finally, I gave an interview in the Racing Post and said I was retiring because I wasn't good enough. That provided me with a crutch to lean on."

The crutch was not enough. Days before his farewell success aboard Mr Big he sought permanent closure for the second time.

"I fell into the pit again," says Tobin. "I picked another awful way to take my life. I decided I was going to drink washing detergent because I figured you couldn't reverse that. I planned to do it when I got home but driving back I called the suicide hotline. Nobody answered, so I had to leave a voicemail message. I decided that was that. I went home, got the bottle, went to the bedroom, started to smell the detergent and then the phone rang. It was someone from the suicide hotline team.

"Since then I've never come as close, but they were two serious moments. If social media was as big then as it is now I would not have survived. I can guarantee that 100 per cent."

Tobin adds: "In racing you're either making it at the top level or you're not. It's a very tough business. Your whole sense of self-worth and value as a person is determined by outside sources over which you have no control. As racing is so all-consuming, your self-worth is completely overtaken by your performance as a jockey. That isn't how it should be at all – and learning that, for me, was huge.

"I had great friends in racing, guys like Dave Crosse, Noel Fehily, Ger Tumelty and Sam Jones. Every one of them would have given me the shirt off their back. I would have a good bet when they read this article they will be shocked to learn things had become so dark for me."

Kevin Tobin, pictured with his wife, Caitlin, on their wedding day

Those friends can take comfort from knowing the darkness has been replaced by light.

"I always have a tendency to overthink but now have the tools to help me when things go downhill," he says. "I know I need to get out of the house, do some exercise or give myself a project. Getting a bit older has also taught me nothing is permanent. The good things, the bad things, the happiness, the sadness, none of it is forever. In the past I carried the fear that when something really good happened I couldn't enjoy it because that might have chased it away. Likewise, when something bad happened I feared it was never going to leave.

"For me, three things are essential. You need someone to love – even if it's just yourself – something to do and something to look forward to. I haven't verged on depression in seven or eight years and wouldn't be afraid if something terrible happened. I would meet it head on."

Tobin can also now look at racing with a smile. He has dabbled in US jump racing, he buys and sells horses, he gets excited about the Cheltenham Festival and when back in Ireland for Christmas there was a morning riding out for Noel Meade. He loved it.

Kevin Tobin (left) aboard It's Rumoured at Plumpton in 2007Credit: Edward Whitaker

"It broke my heart to step away from racing but I know it was the right thing to do," he insists.

"I admire those people like Will Kennedy, Mattie Batchelor and Mark Grant who repeatedly go to the well. I wasn't able to do that in the saddle but I have been able to do it in life. I've ended up with everything I ever wanted – and everything I didn't even know I wanted. I'm not a wealthy man. We still have to save up and choose when we go for a takeaway, but I have the most amazing wife, a great relationship with my family and I can enjoy what life has to offer.

"I also have a handful of friends who have had issues of their own and know about my history. We have a verbal contract with each other. If one of us gets into a position where we're struggling, we have to reach out to the others, even if it's three o'clock in the morning. Over the last few years I've had a couple of those early morning phone calls. Those people are still here today."

Someone else is not. During the Christmas period in 2018 Irish racing was shaken by the death of Keith Dalton, a former Ballydoyle work rider, a much-loved member of the point-to-point scene and, in his final years, a successful jump jockey in America. Dalton took his own life.

"Keith's death hit me like a ton of bricks," says Tobin. "Everybody loved him, just like they loved Banksy, and he seemed to have what most would want in life. When someone takes their life you feel loss and heartbreak – but just imagine how sad and dark you would have to be to go through with it.

"Over the last 20 years suicide has become an option, especially for young men. I can't speak for everybody but I would imagine there are many people who have either attempted suicide or died from suicide who didn't actually want to die. They simply wanted to stop the pain. Suicide has increasingly become seen as a way of turning off that pain.

"Nothing is permanent. Even when someone is so sad they prefer the thought of dying to living one more day, that sadness is not permanent. The outpouring of love and sorrow for those people when they pass away should tell anyone who has their head in that space that there is so much love out there for you. The world is far better off with us in it than not. You will be all right, maybe not right now, but you will be all right.

"Remember, as well, there is nothing wrong with sending someone a text to ask if they're okay. If you had the flu, the chances are some of your friends would reach out and ask how you're feeling. We don't do that enough when it comes to mental health."

Tobin believes there is something else we do not do enough. Following the death of trainer Richard Woollacott in January 2018, his widow, Kayley, spoke frankly about his battle with mental illness and how that battle was ultimately lost. She was not afraid to tell the world her husband died by suicide. Tobin is full of admiration for Woollacott because he is adamant she was right.

"Death is such a sensitive topic, I understand that," he says. "It's great that more people talk about mental health, but to not openly refer to suicide when someone has taken their own life is almost like being afraid to say 'cancer' after a person has died of the disease. If you don't fully embrace that the end result of mental illness is suicide, we are still leaving it out in the cold. That person who is thinking about suicide is still the outlier.

"When I was talking to my dad and other people I figured could help me, I never used the word 'suicide' and I never spoke about killing myself. Perhaps I felt that would startle them. Perhaps I felt it would give away the secret.

"If I'm now sitting across the table from someone and felt they were alluding to it, I would very openly ask if they had thought of harming themselves or taking their own life. Doing that gives it a sense of normality. When you are in that space you feel you are abnormal and that nobody could understand. If someone makes clear what you are feeling is perfectly normal and that you can be helped, it tends to break the barrier."

Tobin has broken the barrier and told his story. That story has moved on to near the east coast of the United States. From there he can take his mind back to the days, the nights and the thoughts that almost brought his journey to an end.

"There's always an alternative," he says, certainty filling his voice. "I would hope, maybe naively, maybe accurately, that one or two people might read this piece and think: 'I never knew that about Kevin. I never knew I was the same as him.' I hope they can see that the only goal is to get better."

Kevin has got better. If others longing to do the same can be helped by his story, his words and his recovery, the world might be a slightly happier place.

Any current or former jockeys can obtain support by speaking to the PJA, IJF, or by directly contacting the PJA's fully-funded provider of counselling services - Sporting Chance - directly on 0778 000 8877. Anyone in racing can call RacingWelfare on 0800 6300 443. The Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123.

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