Kit Harington’s battle with booze – and the GoT twist that sent him spiralling

Kit Harington has taken himself to rehab, reportedly to battle his drink demons once and for all.

The Game Of Thrones star is said to have been left so devastated by the end of the eight-year show that he turned to booze to cope with the stress.

After eight seasons of gruelling filming culminating in his character Jon Snow murdering his on-screen lover Daenerys, Kit checked into a "wellness retreat" in Connecticut to deal with "personal issues".

His publicist said in a statement: "Kit has decided to utilize this break in his schedule as an opportunity to spend some time at a wellness retreat to work on some personal issues."

Kit has been a patient at the luxury Privé-Swiss clinic for a month already. The facility offers psychological coaching, mindful meditation and cognitive behavioural therapy to teach patients how to cope with stress and negative emotions, the New York Post reports.

Already known for his boozing – having been caught getting thrown out of a bar in January 2018 – it's believed Kit spiralled out of control as Game Of Thrones filming came to an end.

He recently admitted to Esquire: "The final day of shooting, I felt fine… I felt fine… I felt fine… Then I went to do my last shots and started hyperventilating a bit.

"Then they called, 'Wrap!' And I just… broke down. It was this onslaught of relief and grief about not being able to do this again."

A pal told the Post that Kit was at the $120,000-a-month facility "predominantly for stress and exhaustion and also alcohol".

His wife Rose Leslie – who played his on-screen lover Ygritte – is being "extremely supportive", the source said.

"Everyone close to him really wanted him to get some rest. Right now, he just needs peace and quiet."

The British actor has kept his drink battle mostly to himself throughout Game Of Thrones, but has had several run-ins with cameras and passersby while drunk.

In March last year, Kit was caught on camera stumbling into a busy street in Paris, where he was on a lads holiday with mates.

The star was spotted wearing nothing but a black t-shirt, jeans and trainers as he stood in the road in a downpour, while one of his pals attempted to remonstrate with him.

Looking worse for wear, Kit leaned against a parked van and stumbled in front of cars while clinging to his mates for support.

Just weeks earlier, the heartthrob actor was kicked out of an upmarket bar in New York over a scuffle involving a pool table.

He was escorted out of Barfly in January 2018 after banging on the table, grabbing the pool cues and shouting at other drinkers during an argument about the rules of the game.

Eyewitnesses saw him being asked to leave, heading out, then returning and having to be physically removed, TMZ reported at the time.

However, the Jon Snow star returned later in the evening to pay his tab having bought a round of drinks for everyone in the bar, adding a one hundred per cent tip on his $70 bill.

"The bartenders that served him both said he was actually a very nice guy," Barfly added in a statement.

It's thought that knowing the final Game Of Thrones episode contained such a bloody twist contributed to Kit's stress.

Footage filmed at the script read-through for the scene in which Jon stabs Daenerys showed Kit breaking down in tears and holding his head in his hands as a tearful Emilia Clarke grimaces at him.

By that point, Kit previously revealed, relationships on set were becoming "frayed".

"You have these in-jokes, and these relationships that thrive for eight years," he told Variety earlier this year .

"That's a long time for those jokes to be going, and they never felt old or tired. In the last season, I was like, these are getting tired now.

"And I think they got tired because we could see the end coming. That's a way of emotionally detaching from something: relationships very slightly starting to strain, just on the edges, just frayed."

Anxiety about his performance plagued Kit throughout his time on the show – and he admitted reading every piece of negative coverage from the beginning.

"My darkest period was when the show seemed to become so much about Jon, when he died and came back," he also told Variety.

"I really didn't like the focus of the whole show coming onto Jon – even though it was invalidating my problem about being the weak link because things were about Jon."

Kit said Jon's fake-death came as he went through something of a life crisis, which led him to seek therapy.

"It wasn't a very good time in my life – I felt I had to feel that I was the most fortunate person in the world, when actually, I felt very vulnerable," he went on.

"I had a shaky time in my life around there – like I think a lot of people do in their 20s. That was a time when I started therapy, and started talking to people. I had felt very unsafe, and I wasn't talking to anyone. I had to feel very grateful for what I have, but I felt incredibly concerned about whether I could even f**king act."

Kit confessed that he will "never be happy with… 70% of the scenes" he shot, but has had to "come to terms with that".

"The end of Jon's journey, whatever that may be … I was satisfied with how his story ended," he added.

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