Hunter Biden on addiction and 'the gift of being publicly shamed' | NPR's Newsmakers

Hi, it's Scott Simon here with a special episode.

Conversation from our sister show, NewsMaker, some of NPR's biggest interviews today, Hunter Bodden. I was on a plane once, was seven years sober. And nothing was going wrong. And somebody asked me if I wanted to drink in 10 years later,

I woke up in a motel with a crack pipe. [MUSIC PLAYING] 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. [MUSIC PLAYING] 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, Candice Owens. When we sat down with other Biden and 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. Lots of different platforms. I'm struck by your first post on X, though. Back in May, was I'm a Hunter Biden.

You've never actually heard from me.

What do you want people to hear?

“Well, 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. They over 50 million Americans who are still sick and suffering out there as a relates to addiction. The one thing that I know that I have a double PhD

in addiction and recovery. And I've a lot to say about a lot of other things. But that's really all baiting to get people to start to have an 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? I'm a believer in the idea that people can be genetically predisposed to addiction.

And so I think that definitely plays a part in it.

“But for me, it began the way that begins for so many.”

I was a kid that had incredibly loving and beautiful childhood, but also filled with trauma. Well, I mean, your family's suffered done incredible loss. I believe you were two years old.

Death of your mother and the 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, it's just about 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 alcohol the most dangerous drug that there is, at least for this addict.

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The last time Antonio May's senior heard from his son, it was in a note, the 16-year-old left in the family's garage. He told me you've no make me proud. Antonio Junior left home to join a protest in Seattle.

A week later, he was shot and killed there. I need some a ref made, just as for my son. Listen to we keep us safe on the embedded podcast from NPR.

producers of the podcast tomorrow's cure,

“keeping you up to date on the future of medicine,”

including the latest advances in AI, cancer, research, and more. Follow tomorrow's cure wherever you're listening now. The way that it starts is that this is something that I tell everybody. Now, I think the hardest question

addicts, 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, hurts the better 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 answers this is because at first, it works.

Is that I was, like, so many people, is that I had a happy childhood, but I was uncomfortable in my own skin.

“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 aren't in recovery 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 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 it works until it doesn't.

“It works until it becomes a thing that 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, OK.

100%. But gradually, in the truth, this is gradually. With varying degrees of consequence, I was able to drink and be functional for a long time and not until 2003 when my primary--

my brother confronted me about it. And when I say confronted me about it, he said, like, hey, you've got to-- you've got to tone it down. And my relationship with 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, OK, I won't drink for the month of January. And I'd make it two weeks. And then I'd say, well, I won't drink during the week days. And then I would have a drink on a Wednesday.

And so eventually, I just said, I need it help. And that's one of the primary things. You need to ask for that help. And I did, and I went to rehab, and it worked. It worked for about seven years until I relaxed.

What happened? Absolutely nothing. Let's see, answer. There wasn't-- it wasn't because of a tragic incident, it wasn't because of-- it was--

I was flying back on a plane. I was by myself from a business trip from Europe. They drink cart rolled by. And the flight attendant asked if I'd like a bloody Mary. It was a morning flight.

And I said, hmm, sure. And it was the strangest thing, because when I went through rehab the first time, one of my counselors with the therapist told me their own story, recovery, and how they relaxed.

And I 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,

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 in cities. Is you're chained 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 from 2010 up until 2019. It was an Odyssey of recovery, relapse, and recovery in varying degrees that became, like all,

addiction, worse and worse.

And I must say, sources of addiction, at least judging

from the outside, a lot more potentially lethal than a bloody Mary. Yeah. And well, one of the things--

“that bloody Mary is going to be awfully lethal”

if you had anybody to say what you say. Is the-- But 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 trade of that drug. And in 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 in my mental state. And my completely obliterating any judgment, to 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 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 that somebody said to me, I should stop saying clean because of the almost pejorative in the 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

in early 20s 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 I've learned in recovery and what 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 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. I would other people to know that are out there sick and suffering right now. No, it isn't.

It's beautiful. Since days are beautiful, beautiful things. I'm literally-- 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 pay.

I mean, I was given the gift of being so publicly shamed and humiliated. And my literally stripped bear, in some cases literally,

No, there were photos that I had nowhere 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 it-- 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 I made the choice to live, not out of courage. I'm probably more out of just having to get up. Just get up. I had to get up.

And when I got up, I realized, OK, 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. They can literally fill your time in a productive way that it 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. Because it's the thing that brings me peace, joy. It's all for me.

I mean, literally, it's one of the most selfish things I think I do on a daily basis, like sitting around talking about recovery for people. Because I get from the feedback.

“And you have to, sometimes, sift through it on platforms like Axe.”

Where's that get a lot of feedback?

As you get, thank you for saying that today.

Now, help me make it through the day. Let me strike upon that, too, to ask. Seems like you've made a particular effort in speaking out to be with people like Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes. You made a particular effort to reach out to people who--

let's put it this way, not been in your fan club. Yeah, no, they have my been my, they've sent some of the most horrible, hurtful things that could be said about-- and I really don't care what to say about me, but even more so about my family, about my dad.

I wanted to go into the lines, Dan, with the people that had pursued me the most was siftersley 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 a devolved into an argument,

and at least in which I got to express my mind, it was worth it to me. And but maybe we may see the humanity and each other. And that was the instance with Candace, and I will say this.

I don't agree with Candace on so many things. And she knows us. I don't agree with her as it relates to the way and what 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's gay. And 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 can release break that kind of--”

I don't even know the perception and misconception, misinformation to information. And you see her differently now, too? Yes, I do. I see her differently in this.

As a Candace is a mom, I can say without equivocation is that she is a her studios 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. That doesn't make the fact that she doesn't believe

And it's different to me. But I know that she actually cares.

“Whether I think that she's misguided in the way”

and 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 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 evolved and 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 sit down with Candace Owens and effectively break bread, I hopefully

set an example the way in which I think, hopefully, we're going to have a chance to heal. After switch gears, you've been in a political family all of your life. Taking advantage of the clear side, you

say you have now. What do your cranial energy company pay you

“or I believe it was 83,000 dollars a month as a consultant?”

Was that because you were Joe Biden's son? I think in part, yes, 100%. I think what people can flate 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 president. 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 US Union World

Food Program for over five years. A largest humanitarian organization in the world we were responsible for securing over $2.6 billion budget for feeding 82 million people in 72 different countries on a daily basis.

I was a adjunct professor at Georgetown University's School Foreign Service in the master's program for over four years, and with the Yale Law School, I was at Boy Shiller Flexner, in which I was an expert on corporate governance.

I served on 17 other boards in between that time, all of various significant boards, including as Vice Chairman of the Board of Amtrak. And so I was pre-eminently qualified to be on that board. Question is, should I have taken that job?

When my dad was in the answer is no,

I shouldn't have. And I never done that before. And 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 maybe because I'm getting paid. Now 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.

“What do you-- 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.

I don't know the answer to that, exactly. Well, everybody has opinion, though. And what they think is, is that I was corrupt. And I drifted it off my father's name, right? So, other than the one instance in which you can talk about,

in which I took a board seat, when my brother was diagnosed with

Cleoplastoma, I knew my father was never going to run for office

ever again. And I decided to take a board seat with the company that, by the way, I did absolutely zero for as a released 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 the president? When my dad was President, you know what I did? I painted. I sold paintings through a gallery.

Two people that were all public. And you can go read about who bought my paintings, because it 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 investigating 10 years? By every single, I've been investigated

by the House of Oursite Community, the Senate Judiciary, the House Judiciary, the House of 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 the paid for my taxes. So I filed and paid for them. And I paid with penalties and interest.

In three years after I did that, they prosecuted me. That's what I did. - I do have to ask this little more difficult. You were convicted of federal contractors in 2020. - Yeah, you realized Supreme Court just made that

unconstitutional, that what they charged me in 192G-3. - I guess I didn't, but, yeah, we were pardoned by our father. - Yes, thank God. - Did that open the door for President Trump to pardon some of his supporters,

including the January 6th, crying? - Okay.

“- I think that that is an insane argument.”

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 sense their pardon,

many of them have gone back to commit crimes, including sexually abusing children. I don't think that the two are the same thing. Not only that, this is this. I ask you this question.

My convictions, I was convicted, and I was convicted by a jury, and I was convicted because technically, in 100% I had committed a crime. I did not pay my taxes on time,

and even though I paid them with penalties in interest, it was a crime to do so. I purchased a gun at a time when it could conceivably be argued that I was addicted to a substance, and that when I checked the box on that form

and saying that I was not, I committed a crime.

“- I mean, that's why the question is there.”

- Yeah, exactly. - Because you're people who were, yeah, yeah. - Yeah. - And which, by the way, the question also asks whether you've ever been or used or used or of marijuana.

And 80 million Americans who aren't guns

of all used or marijuana. And that's why the Supreme Court just overturned his own constitutional. My point is this. If my dad had won, he would have kept his word.

He would not have pardoned me. And the reason that he would have not have pardoned me is because I would have told him, I have complete an utter faith in the fact that number one, I think that I will win some of this on appeal,

but number two is that as a first-time offender for a nonviolent crime without a victim, they've not gonna spend any time in jail. That's a certainty. And that I know that between the Department of Justice,

the Department of Corrections and the Department of Probation, an absolute faith in our system, that I would be treated fairly like any other person, like any other person that had been convicted.

in the idea that this Department of Justice,

this Department of Corrections, this Department of Probation,

“that does things like move Jelaine Maxwell”

from a minimum security prison to a prison camp without any explanation that moves prisoners around, Alexander Smyrnaugh, who's convicted of bribing, accusing me of bribery, can't be found in the prison system right now

because they've moved him somewhere. And so my point is, is that when my dad woke up after Thanksgiving, and after the election occurred, and he read that Donald Trump had just appointed my kids

to be the attorney general.

I think that he made a decision then,

that Donald Trump had made a decision not to actually, but here 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,

in his Department of Probation. One year after Congress eliminated federal funding for public media and PR remains committed to informing the public, but a free press doesn't just happen,

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- No, no. - Did you tell him? - No, I told him this, is that I would at 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 that people I don't think fully comprehend.

A president, 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 had was making the decision that there was this kind of that I was in there telling my dad that he got his he has to stay and he's run and literally nothing could 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, where I think by anybody's estimation, a really difficult four years, that a lot of it, my own making. But a lot of it, just by simply because of who he was

in 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 most difficult things

that I can ever imagine putting someone through. And more than anything, I just wanted to have my dad back.

“- Did you tell him that or when he made the decision, yeah?”

- Okay, but not before that. - No, because I think it's unfair to me to do because I know this also. There's only one thing like that cares about more

And my mom, my sister, 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, I think that's incredibly unfair”

to do to somebody.

I would never want to be that.

I would never want it to be the reason that he didn't fulfill what he believed was his duty in service. - Did you notice ways in which he was beginning to fall? - I noticed things that were purely associated

in typical with growing older. His speech slowed down, he literally lost a step. And what I mean, lost a step is that his gate was changed. And all of it, but is, you know, not all of it, I think it's something that every single person

that's listening to this right now or in this room can understand having watched someone in their life to 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. - As your father, they've been following your recent interviews - Postage? - Yeah, and he is one thing that he said to me, stop using the effort so much. All right, I've read that.

- And I said, you gotta be kidding me. (laughs) - You haven't used it for us. - At least it maybe I should say so far. - No, and I, and I won't.

I look, and I said dad, and I said every single one of those efforts was earned on my part. - No, I mean, do you regret that? - Does it die? - No, not at all.

- Really? - Not, not even. - I know, I, 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 out in 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 in fact,”

since you, when I'm talking to Andrew Calhan, 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 that I talk to you or my dad. But I think that in this media environment,

people say, oh, a lot of people turn off when they hear that, the harsh language. And I say, well, come to an Andrew Calhan event with me or 1,500 people in the, 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. And 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, my best friend, just overdose from fentanyl, 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 effort. Are you ever really over in 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 piece of this that most people in recovery, and she's not recover. 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 unfair to do yourself. 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,

or a combination of all of those things, will always

exist with them.

“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 everywhere. Because look, I was on a plane once, seven years sober.

I had a good day. It was a beautiful trip that I had taken to Europe, it was on business, and nothing was going wrong. And somebody asked me if I wanted to drink in 10 years later, I woke up in a motel with a crackpot.

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, can you say something that would help them take a step forward?

What do they need to know about that? 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. A 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 of experience, strength, and hope if you've gotten to the other side of it.

And that's what I'm doing. I'm created a thing where you can go to honderbiden.com/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? No, no. I don't. The times that I felt the most alone were when in the window between an ebryation

and sobriety. When you felt like you didn't have any way out and that your only choice was to anesthesize yourself again. And 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. It's just to have that choice. Hunter Biden, thanks so much.

Yeah, it's an honor. Thank you, Scott. [MUSIC PLAYING] Before we go, a reminder. New episodes of NewsMakers Drop

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