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Please note: This article contains information on addiction, depression and suicide. Please proceed with care. If this story is in any way triggering, please call LifeLine Australia on 13 11 14. If you are in the U.S., the American Foundation For Suicidal Prevention is here to help. Call 800 273 8255. Or text “Talk” to 741 741.

While it is already known that Kit Harington had to seek therapy for anxiety while playing Game of Thrones character Jon Snow, the actor has laid bare the trauma he endured following the release of the eighth and final season. In a recent interview with the Sunday Timesthe 34-year-old admitted he checked himself into rehab after hiding addiction and depression from his wife, and GOT co-star Rose Leslie.

“Things that have happened to me since ‘Thrones’ ended, and that were happening during ‘Thrones,’ were of a pretty traumatic nature, and they did include alcohol,” Harington told the publication. “You get to a place where you feel like you are a bad person, you feel like you are a shameful person, and you feel that there’s no way out. That’s just who you are. And getting sober is the process of going, ‘No, I can change.’”

The actor undertook treatment at the Connecticut retreat Privé-Swiss in May 2019 after grappling with suicidal ideation. “I went through periods of real depression where I wanted to do all sorts of things,” he noted.

“You can imagine the stresses that it causes to those around you,” he explained. “I will say about my addictions that I kept them very, very quiet and I was incredibly secretive and incredibly locked up with them.”

Harington also noted that the old notion “leopard doesn’t change its spots” is “completely false”, and assisted the actor in working on himself for lasting change in rehab.

Harington and Leslie welcomed a baby boy in February 2021. The couple married in 2018 at Leslie’s ancestral castle in Scotland.