Hunter Biden on addiction and being publicly shamed

I was on a plane once. I was seven years sober. It was a beautiful trip, and nothing was going wrong. And somebody asked me if I wanted a drink. And ten years later, I woke up in a motel with a crack pipe. My dad got older before people's eyes, and I think that made them very nervous. You were pardoned by your father. Yes, thank God. Did that open the door for President Trump to pardon some of his supporters, including the January 6th gang? I think that that is an insane argument. This is Newsmakers, NPR's biggest interviews. I'm Scott Simon. Hunter Biden has been all over the Internet lately. He's trolled President Trump and discussed his past struggles with addiction. But he's also made appearances with some fierce critics, including the conservative podcaster and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens. When we sat down with Hunter Biden in NPR studios in New York City this week, he told us he had nothing left to hide. You've been speaking out so much in the past few months on lots of different platforms. I'm struck by your first post on X, though, back in May, which was, I'm Hunter Biden, you've never actually heard from me. Yeah. What do you want people to hear? Well, the most important. The most important thing that I think I can do with a platform that I never asked for is to speak to the millions of people, the over 50 million Americans who are still sick and suffering out there as it relates to addiction. The one thing that I know that I have a double PhD in is addiction and recovery. And. You know, I have a lot to say about a lot of other things, but that's really all bait to get people to start to have a open discussion about something that I am absolutely positive impacts all of us, and that's addiction. Looking back, how did that begin for you? You know, I'm a believer, I'm a believer in the idea that people can be genetically predisposed to addiction. And so I think that that definitely plays a part in it. But for me, it began the way that it begins for so many, is, you know, I was a kid that had an incredibly loving, and beautiful childhood, but also filled with trauma. Well, I mean, your family suffered an incredible loss. Yeah. I believe you were two years old. Yeah. Death of your mother and a sister. Yeah, and I never wanted to associate, because it feels like a loss of control when something happens to you when you're two years old, just about, and then you're three, and that trauma, my brother and I being in the accident, and being in that car with my mom and my sister, is, I never wanted to believe or blame what I, for so long, kind of felt was my own failing, my own failing that I couldn't control my drug use. When I say drug use, I consider, I consider alcohol the most dangerous drug that there is, at least for this addict. The way that it started is, is that, this is something that I tell everybody now, is that, I think the hardest question addicts and alcoholics have answering the people that love them, is why. You know, why do you keep doing it? And. When you know. When you know. It's hurting you, and for that matter, it hurts the people you love. And the devastation is, the blast radius of your addiction is not just impacting you, but concentric circles around you. And the true answer is this, is because at first it works, is that I was, like so many people, is that I was, I had a happy childhood, but I was uncomfortable in my own skin. I, and from the most trivial thing of being able to ask the girl to dance, to, you know, do public speaking, but also this sense of, and I know other people that are in recovery will, will immediately understand what I'm saying, is the feeling of being alone in a crowded room. And what, alcohol did for me, when I was younger, and I mean normal, like, you know, teenager in high school and have a, you know, go on the weekend, have a beer or more. And what it did is it worked. All of that kind of fear-based reaction to connection disappeared. I was able to ask the girl to dance. I was able to do the things that I wouldn't have, the courage to do unless I had a drink. And, and it, and it works until it doesn't. It works until it becomes a, um, the, the thing that is, uh, is, is you become a prisoner too. Well, I mean, to point out the obvious, it became a lot more serious than just having a drink to ask a girl to the dance. Oh, a hundred percent, but gradually in the truth is, is that gradually, with, with varying degrees of consequence, um, I was able to drink and be functional for a long time and not until 2003 when my, uh, primarily my, my brother confronted me about it. And when I say confronted me about it, he said like, Hey, you gotta, you gotta tone it down. Um, and, uh, and my relationship was my brother was such is that I knew that if he was saying that to me that I had to take it seriously. And so what I would do when he first did, I said, okay, I won't drink for the month of January and I'd make it two weeks and then I'd say why I won't drink during the weekdays and then I would have a drink on a Wednesday until, um, eventually I just said, uh, uh, I needed help. And that's one of the primary things is, uh, you need to ask for that help. And, um, and I did, and I went to rehab and, and, and, uh, and it was, uh, and it worked, it worked for about, uh, seven years until I relapsed. - What happened? - Um, absolutely nothing. That's the answer. - Mm-hmm. - There wasn't, it wasn't because of a tragic incident. Wasn't because of a, um, it was, uh, I was flying back on a plane. I was by myself from a business trip from Europe. The drink cart rolled by and the, uh, the flight attendant asked if I'd, uh, like Bloody Mary. It was a morning flight. And I said, hmm, sure. You know? And, um, and it was the strangest thing because when I was in, uh, when I went through rehab the first time, the, uh, one of my counselors, uh, one of the therapists, told me their own story of recovery and how they relapsed and how you always have to be aware of it. And he told me a story of being seven years sober, being on a plane and having a drink. He was flying to DC and he woke up in Albuquerque. - Hmm. - Like four days later. Now, I didn't wake up in Albuquerque. What I did was I kind of brushed it under the rug. And here's where addiction is insidious, is you're ashamed that you somehow failed because you've just relapsed. And you don't want to get honest with yourself about it. And therefore you don't get honest with anybody around you about it. And so now you're hiding something. And I went through, um, from 2000, 2010, uh, up until 2019, it was an odyssey of, of, uh, recovery, relapse recovery in varying degrees that became, uh, like all addiction, worse and worse. - And, and I must say sources of addiction, at least judging from the outside, a lot more potentially lethal than a Bloody Mary. - Yeah. And, um, well, one of the things. - A Bloody Mary's can be awfully lethal if you have 10 of them. I don't know what you're saying, is the, but. And the most dangerous thing about crack cocaine, which eventually, not until 2017 or 16, excuse me, did I start smoking crack, but the most dangerous thing about illicit drug use, and particularly certain illicit drug use, is the potential for violence that occurs because of the trait of that drug. And the fact that it's not sold over a counter like a bottle of vodka. The most dangerous thing, however, that I ever ingested in terms of what it did to my physical body and my mental state and my completely obliterating any judgment in me was alcohol. How do you come to terms with. Hurting the people you love most in the world? Painfully and slowly. And with an enormous sense of, or acceptance of the grace that others have provided me. I am incredibly grateful every single day for the fact that my family, and particularly my daughters, have shown me. I'm seven years clean and sober now. And as somebody said to me, I should stop saying clean because it's almost pejorative in a sense. So I'm substance free for seven years, over seven years now. And it's taken those seven years to. And it will take seven more to fully allow for the hurt. To wash through the system. My hurt with my family, and particularly my daughters, more than anything, who were in their late teens and early twenties when I went through the worst of it, was that I was an ever-present. I was ever-present in their lives. From the time they were born until the time that I decided that I was just going to disappear. And that hurt of. Becoming not just unavailable, but disappearing from them was incredibly painful to them. And the one thing that we learned, and that I've learned in recovery, and the practices that I kind of employ, is that you can seek forgiveness, but never seek forgiveness with an expectation that you will be forgiven. I've been. Incredibly, incredibly blessed. In that I've been given the grace of being welcomed back into the lives of the people that I love the most. Is it a struggle to stay sober every day? No, it isn't. And that's what I want other people to know that are out there sick and suffering right now. No, it isn't. It's beautiful. Days are beautiful, beautiful things. I'm literally. I'm. I am more grateful for my life and all of it right now than I've ever been in my entire life. I am filled with purpose and purpose with a small p. I don't mean like. It just. I was given the gift of being so publicly shamed and humiliated. And my. Literally stripped bare. In some cases, literally stripped naked in the public square. There were photos. Yeah. That I had nowhere to. I had nowhere left to hide. I had no more secrets that I could keep. They were all exposed. Every single one of them. And in that, what I found is this. Is that I either had a choice when I woke up in the morning to get out of bed. And live. Or curl up and die. Literally. And that. And I made the choice to live, not out of courage. I'm probably more out of. Just habit. Habit? I had to get up. Just get up. I had to get up. And when I got up, I realized, okay. Like. There's something to live for. And I always tell people that the most important thing that I think that you can do. Is figure out what it is that can literally fill your time in a productive way that is not a burden to you. Something that you want to do. And the second and most important thing is get out of your own head. And the easiest way to get out of your own head is to try to figure out how to be kind and help another person. That's completely. Selfish. Completely selfish. Is. Because it's the thing that brings me peace, joy. It's all for me. I mean, it literally is one of the most selfish things I think I do on a daily basis. Like sitting around talking about recovery for, you know, with people. Because what I get from the feedback. And you have to sometimes sift through it on platforms like X. What was I going to say? A lot of feedback. As you get. Thank you for saying that today. It helped me make it through the day. Let me strike off on that to ask. It seems like you've made a particular effort in speaking out to be with people like Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes. Have you made a particular effort to reach out to people who've, let's put it this way, not been in your fan club? Yeah. No. They have been my. They've sent some of the most horrible, hurtful things that could be said about. And I really don't care what they say about me, but even more so about my family, about my dad. I wanted to go into the lion's den with the people that had pursued me the most vociferously. Over the past seven years. And had said some of the most hurtful things that you can say about another human being. And because I felt like if I. Number one, if it devolved into an argument, at least in which I got to express my mind, that was worth it to me. And. But maybe, maybe we may see the humanity. And each other. And that was the instance with Candace. And I was. And I will say this. I don't agree with Candace on so many things. And she knows this. I don't agree with her as it relates to the way in which she talks about Judaism. I do not particularly agree with the way in which she talks about homosexuality and the LGBTQIA community. It really bothers me as someone who is. My daughter is gay and I'm. And. And. I. It really bothers me. But the thing that I got to with Candace was that she saw me as a human being. And I think if I could at least break that kind of. I don't even know. The perception? Misconception? Misconception? Misinformation? Disinformation? And. Do you see her differently now too? Yes, I do. I see her differently in this. Is that Candace is a mom. I am. And I can say without equivocation is that I. She is a. I. I. Her studio is in her house. And I saw her interact with her kids. And not in a performative way in any way. She's a mom. She's a mom first. It doesn't make the fact that she doesn't believe that we landed on the moon any different to me. But I know that she actually cares. Whether I think that she's misguided in the way in which she expresses that. I do know that she cares very much about her faith. She is a newly converted Catholic. And I'm not a. I'm not a very good practicing Catholic. But I was raised a Catholic. So we found ways to be able to connect. And I think in a world in which we've all been told. And I think it's BS. Told that we are all so divided. And that we're on the brink of a civil war. And that we're never going to be able to come back together. I think that that is just not true. I think that we're being fed that. By people that have an interest in keeping us divided. And so if I could go. Go sit down with Candace Owens and effectively break bread. I hopefully set an example of the way in which I think hopefully we're going to have a chance to heal. I have to switch gears. You've been in a political family all of your life, taking advantage of the clear sight you say you have now. When a Ukrainian energy company pays you, I believe it was $83,000 a month as a consultant, was that because you were Joe Biden's son? I think in part, yes, 100%. I think what people conflate about that is this, is that I accept the criticism of the idea that – I should not have taken that job because of the fact that my dad was at the time, was in the last year of his vice presidency. But I will remind people that 75% of the time that I had that job, my dad was neither vice president nor president. And I would say to people is that if you're criticizing me because of some idea that I was not qualified for the job, I would say this. I was chairman of the board of the U.S.-Union World Food Program for over five years, the largest humanitarian organization in the world. We were responsible for securing over a $2.6 billion budget for feeding 70 or 82 million people in 72 different countries on a daily basis. I was an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in the master's program for over four years. I went to Yale Law School. I was at Boishiller. I was at Boishiller-Flexner, in which I was an expert on corporate governance. I served on 17 other boards in between that time, all very significant boards, including as vice chairman of the board of Amtrak. And so I was preeminently qualified to be on that board. The question is, should I have taken that job when my dad was in the – and the answer is no, I shouldn't have. And I had never done that before. The way that you can certify that is this, is that they stole 20 years of my digital life. They stole every email, every text message, every voicemail, deleted voicemail somehow they got. And they took that and they made it available to everybody. You can still go on it and see it now. And I challenge anyone to find a single instance in which when my dad was vice president, senator, or president, you have a single communication in which I say, hey, I need dad to do this for me because I'm getting paid. Not one. Now, one board membership compared to what I just read in the – and I think it was Forbes. Just from DOD contracts alone, Don Trump and Eric, while their dad is president, have received, over $3.9 billion in DOD contracts to companies of which they have a stake in. $3.9 billion in the first year and a half of this presidency. They have made billions of dollars. Well, even if the numbers don't compare though. Yeah. Are you and the Trump sons both part of the same system? No. Not even remotely. Not even remotely. What did I do when my dad was president? I don't know the answer to that exactly. Well, everybody has an opinion though. And what they think is, is that I was corrupt and I drifted off my father's name, right? So where – other than the one instance in which you can talk about, in which I took a board seat when my brother was diagnosed with glioblastoma, I knew my father was never going to run for office ever again. And I decided to take a board seat. I took a board seat with the company that, by the way, I did absolutely zero for as it relates to any government policy. Other than that, how is it even remotely like what they're doing? How do you even mention my name in the context of their name other than the fact that I was also the son of a president? When my dad was president, you know what I did? I painted. I sold paintings through a gallery to people that were all public. And you can go read about who bought my paintings. Because there was congressional testimony under oath given by every single one of the people that bought one of my paintings. I made $200,000 a year on average when my dad was president of the United States. That's it. $200,000 a year. And I can verify it because there's sworn congressional testimony. There is a – how many years have I been investigated? Ten years? By every single – I've been investigated by – I've been investigated by the House Oversight Committee, the Senate Judiciary, the House Judiciary, the House Ways and Means Committee, by the Department of Justice, Main Justice, by the Tax Division, by the Criminal Tax Division, by the U.S. Attorney in Pittsburgh, by the U.S. Attorney in Delaware, by the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles. And what they came up with is that in one year, after I got sober, I realized I had not filed and paid for my taxes. So I filed and paid for them. And I paid. And I paid. The penalty is an interest. And three years after I did that, they prosecuted me. That's what I did. I do have to ask this a little more difficult. You were convicted of federal gun charges in 2024. Yeah. You realize the Supreme Court just made that unconstitutional, what they charged me, 922G3. I guess I didn't, but you were pardoned by your father. Yes. Thank God. Did that open the door for President Trump to pardon some of his supporters? Including the January 6th gang? Do I think that my father, pardoning me, opened the door for Donald Trump to pardon people that engaged in an insurrection, beat police officers, and then since their pardon, many of them have gone mad? I don't think that my father, pardon me, opened the door for Donald Trump to pardon people that engaged in an insurrection, beat police officers, and then since their pardon, many of them have gone mad? to the Constitution, the rule of law. and that he intended to take out and meet justice through his own Department of Justice, his Department of Corrections, and his Department of Probation. Did you want your father to run for re-election? No. No. Did you tell him? No. I told him this, is that I would, like I'd done my entire life, is that I supported whatever he thought was best as it related to what he wanted to do to serve. There was nothing that was more important to me than getting my dad back, getting my family back. And the presidency does something. The people I don't think fully comprehend. It's almost impossible for a president to be fully present in the lives of the people that he loves the most because it is literally all-consuming. It is an all-consuming thing. And I know that people have reported that at the end when he was making the decision that there was this kind of, that I was in there telling my dad that he has to stay and he's running. And literally nothing. There's nothing that can be further from the truth. And I think that they know that. But just from a logical perspective, what would I possibly have to gain to continue to be the target that I was? The four years of his presidency were, I think, by anybody's estimation, a really difficult four years. That. I. A lot of it, my own making. But a lot of it, just by simply because of who he was and the position that he held, in which the struggles that I was trying to overcome in sobriety, sober this entire time, building a family and rebuilding a family, to do it while he was president, was maybe one of the. one of the most difficult things that I can ever imagine putting someone through. And. And more than anything, I just wanted to have my dad back. Did you. I mean, did you tell him that, or.? When he made this decision, yeah. Okay, but not before that. No, because I think it's unfair to me to do. Because this. Because I know this also. There's only one thing my dad cares about more than. than his service. And that's me. And my mom, my sister, and my. and his grandkids, my children. There's only one thing that he cared about more than his job. And that's his family. And for somebody in his family, particularly me, to say, Dad, please don't do it. I don't know how it. I think that's incredibly unfair to do to somebody. I would never want to be that. I would never not. I would never want it to be the reason that he didn't. fulfill what he believed. It was his duty and service. Did you notice ways in which he was beginning to falter? I noticed things that were. purely associated and typical with growing older. His speech slowed down. He literally lost a step. And what I mean lost a step is that, like, his gait was changed. And all of it is, you know, not. all of it, I think, is something that every single person that's listening to this right now or in this room can understand, having watched someone in their life get older. And it does not, in any way, mean that there is a cognitive failure. But my dad got older before people's eyes. And I think that made them very nervous. Yeah. Has your father been following your recent interviews, postings? Yeah, and he. his one. one thing that he said to me. Stop using the F-word so much. All right, I've read that. And I said, you've got to be kidding me. You haven't used it with us. At least, maybe I should say so far. No, and I won't. Look, I said, Dad, and I said, every single one of those F-words was earned on my part. I mean, do you regret that? Does it. No, not at all. Really? Not even. I know. I think that there's a. Look, I think that there is an audience for me to speak the way that I would speak. If I was sitting having lunch with you, Scott, I wouldn't. that's not the way that I would speak. We don't. we're not familiar enough that I would say or do something that I think that would be shocking or offensive to you. When I'm talking to Andrew. Callahan, who's 28 years old, and the average age of his audience is between 18 and 29. And he's using that word with me, I'm more than comfortable using it, because that's the way that I talk with the one I'm, you know, with my friends, it's not the way that I talk to my daughter. It's not the way that I would talk to my wife. It's definitely not the way I talk to you or my dad. But I think that in this media environment, you know, people say, oh, well, a lot of people turn off when they hear that, you know, that harsh language. And I say, well, come to an Andrew Callahan event with me, or 1500 people in a, I call them draft age, 18 to 35. And it's an incredibly different world out there. And I think a lot of people are missing it. And a lot of people missing it, because they can't speak to it. And what I've found is that the single superpower I have is that there is no barrier between them and me. They don't look at me and think, oh, he's something other than us, because they've seen all of me. And it gives them license, which I love to come up to me. You know what they say? They say, thank you for talking about this, because my dad just got one year sober. Can you call him and tell him? They say to me, I lost my brother too. And they say, to me, like, you know, my best friend just overdosed from fentanyl. Can you, can you send him a message? He's in the hospital. That's what they say to me. They don't say to me, wow, you really got to stop using the F word. Are you ever really over an addiction? Never, never. Now, my wife hates when I say this. And she hates when I say this, because she thinks that there's a psychological problem. And she thinks that there's a psychological problem. And most people in recovery, and she's not in recovery, she's that she does not have this problem at all. But she thinks that imprinting that negativity onto you with the word is that once an addict, always an addict, I'm an addict, is, is unfair to do yourself. When I, and I say to her, well, it's a fine line. Because what you always want to remind yourself of, is that that proclivity to addiction, whether it's genetic, whether it's chemical, whether it is psychological, or a combination of all of those things, will always exist within me. I cannot ingest a mind altering substance without the possibility of falling back into addiction. And I have to always remind myself of that. Now, I don't have to always beat myself up with it. But I always have to be cognizant of where, because look, I was on a plane once, I was seven years sober. I had a good day. It was a beautiful trip that I had taken to Europe, I was on business. And nothing was going wrong. And 10 years later, I woke up in a motel with a crack pipe. And that's a literal linear way to tell the story. And so I'm always aware of it. For people who are watching and listening to us, watching and listening to you. Yeah. Can you say something that would help them take a step forward? What do they need to know now? Okay. I love that question. Thank you. You are not alone. That's my single most important message. 50 million Americans on any given day are dealing with addiction. That means almost every one of the 350 million Americans have been impacted in some way by addiction. Addiction is a family disease. It is a communal disease. And you are not alone. And so speak about it. Share your story. And more than anything, is share your story. Share your story of experience, strength, and hope if you've gotten to the other side of it. And that's what I'm doing. I've created a thing where you You can go to HunterBiden.com backslash recovery and share your story of your experience, strength, and hope. And totally anonymously and not for anything. It's not a business venture. It's nothing. It's where people can go and share their stories so that other people can read them and hopefully realize that they're not alone. Do you feel alone sometimes? Not now. No, I don't. The times that I felt the most alone were when in the window between inebriation and sobriety. When you felt like you didn't have any way out and that your only choice was to anesthetize yourself again. In those windows, you feel more alone than anything that you can imagine. Every day, I was actively, actively choosing suicide. And I knew it. Not in a metaphorical sense. I knew I was killing myself. And I didn't feel like I had any other choice. But today, I have a choice. And that is the greatest gift that anyone can ask, is just to have that choice. Hunter Biden, thanks so much. Yeah, it's an honor. Thank you, Scott. And before we go, a reminder. New episodes of Newsmakers drop as soon as they're available. So the best way to stay up is to follow or subscribe to this show on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you watch or listen. You can also find us in the NPR app. Newsmakers relies on supporters who value independent journalism and a free press. Join NPR Plus today to support our work and to get perks from the podcasts you trust. Just go to plus.npr.org. I'm Scott Simon, and thank you for listening to NPR's Newsmakers.