Kit Harington admits feeling suicidal, discusses addiction struggles

"Game of Thrones" actor Kit Harington has recently opened up about battling depression due to his 'pretty traumatic' addiction struggles. 

The actor revealed that he had contemplated suicide while working on hit TV show "Game of Thrones."

The British actor had recently celebrated two and a half years of sobriety. 

He stayed at a Connecticut treatment facility for “substances” and “behaviors," in 2019 and decided to turn things around.

"I went through periods of real depression where I wanted to do all sorts of things," he revealed.

Kit Harington with wife and former co-star Rose Leslie| Collected

He told the Sunday Times Magazine, "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." 

“You get to a place where you feel like you are a bad person, you feel like you are a shameful person," he continued.. "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.’ One of my favorite things I learnt recently is that the expression ‘a leopard doesn’t change its spots’ is completely false: that a leopard actually does change its spots. I just think that’s the most beautiful thing. It really helped. That was something I kind of clung to; the idea that I could make this huge fundamental change in who I was and how I went about my life.”

Kit Harington as Jon Snow in HBO's "Game of Thrones"| Collected

"You can imagine the stresses that it causes to those around you," he said, adding, “I will say about my addictions that I kept them very, very quiet and I was incredibly secretive and incredibly locked up with them. So they came as quite a surprise to the people around me. Which is quite often the case, I guess.”

He said his wife Leslie taught him the value of "kindness" during this difficult period of his life. 

 Harington said that smoking remains his only bad habit. "I’m trying to work out how to kick that."

The Jon Snow actor expressed hope that his experience can “maybe help someone, somewhere."

"But I definitely don’t want to be seen as a martyr or special," he said. "I’ve been through something, it’s my stuff. If it helps someone, that’s good.”