Through decades of addiction, Hunter Biden says his family never gave in to him: NPR

In essence, Hunter Biden’s new diary, beautiful thingsIt is an addiction story.

Biden, the president’s 51-year-old son, wrote that he first bought cocaine at the age of 18. He fell in love with alcohol for the first time in high school and started drinking heavily after working in his twenties. He writes, “I could always drink five times more than anyone else.”

He’s been in and out of rehab numerous times over the past two decades and has long periods of sobriety between relapses.

It is also a story about a family’s love and loss. Biden was 2 years old when his mother and sister died in a car accident. Hunter and his brother Bo were seriously injured but survived.

Biden wrote that his addiction entered a particularly dark phase after Poe died of brain cancer In 2015. It got to the point where in an intervention in early 2019, his father held him in a bear hug, saying, “I don’t know what to do.”

Hunter Biden says his wife Melissa took control of his life shortly after they met later that year.

In an interview with NPR’s Scott Simon Morning Edition, Biden credits his family’s unwavering love for his survival.

“There was never a moment when they didn’t try to save me,” Biden says.

He also talks about his well-paid job at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, which started in 2014 when this father, Joe Biden, was vice president. Former President Donald Trump portrayed it as a corrupt deal involving Joe Biden. Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Biden case led to Trump’s first impeachment.

that Republican Senate-led investigation It found that Hunter Biden’s position on the company’s board of directors raised concerns about a potential conflict of interest but concluded that “the extent to which his” role “affects US policy toward Ukraine is not clear. Biden says he has done nothing unethical.

He told NPR that it was “definitely not wise in this political environment to create this perception of” corruption “and that is why I would not do it again.”

Here are excerpts from the interview:

Can you tell us some of those things you tell yourself to yourself when you’ve been drinking?

One of the things about being stuck in your addiction – there wasn’t much that I would think any alcoholic would, when they drink, is logical reasoning. This is why it is so difficult to get yourself out of it.

I talk about this in the book when my dad and mom asked me to come down. And I was staying in a hotel room somewhere in Connecticut, and I got into the house and there with my daughters, Naomi and Finnegan and Macy, and my niece and nephew, Natalie and Hunter, and two counselors. You know, my immediate reaction was to run. My dad grabbed me and grabbed me, put me in a bear hug and just said, “I don’t know what to do.” Even with all this love, the feeling that this love had overcome my need for another blow was hard to live with.

But that’s what recovery is all about – is being true to yourself and understanding the strength of this drug or the power of addiction.

Your father told you when this happened, in your memory in the book, he said, “I don’t know what to do other than that. I’m so scared. Tell me what to do.”

Yes, I think there are a lot of people out there who love someone who has an addiction. I mean, we are now struggling with two pandemics, the Coronavirus but also the addiction pandemic, which I hope ultimately will start talking about it as a mental health issue rather than just a criminal justice issue.

You were on the board of directors of a Ukrainian energy company while your father was involved in making American policy towards Ukraine. right Now, Investigation By the Senate Republicans found no wrongdoing or improper effect, but was it wise to do so?

I was a member of about ten boards before I joined Burisma’s board of directors. I have experience in corporate governance. I was a lawyer for Boies Schiller Flexner, which is one of the best law firms in the world. This is how you came to the job.

But until you notice your last name helped.

Oh, I think it’s important for me in every situation to make this clear and be honest about it. But, you know, I worked really hard to graduate from Yale Law School. I had a job. And at the end of the day, the question was whether that was wise. Well, what I know now is that it definitely was not wise in this political environment to create this perception, which is why I would never do it again.

May I ask how much I paid?

I think it has been reported. I paid generously. I don’t want to say the exact number now because I don’t want to err, but I got paid well.

Because there are sections in the book when describing you’ll be held for weeks in hotel suites, cooking and cracking, while merchants remove the minibar, and order room service all in your tab. How did you endure that?

Well, I’ve had a successful business that goes beyond Burisma. The fact of the matter is that addiction strikes hard and quickly. And if I don’t come out of the rut, I won’t be able to continue. But it wasn’t just hotel suites. I spent a lot of time in motel rooms for $ 39 a night up and down I-95.

Do you worry about holding back?

continuously. I have a healthy fear of relapse. It is a big part of my story. I’m only one option away from going back to exactly where I was. This is a mystery for everyone who recovers. It never goes away. It just hides.

Are you afraid of hurting your father?

I was never afraid of hurting my father in the sense that any mistakes I made would tear his love for me apart. But I still continued to realize just how much pain it caused. …

This is why I wrote the book, really the reason I wrote the book, is because it will give hope to some people. Give them some hope that they won’t have to stay locked up in that prison. And I don’t just mean the people stuck at the bottom of the well as I was, but the people who stand at the top of that well and realize unless we slide with the lantern, they will never find its way out. But this is a dark and dangerous journey for them. It was for my family. But their light never searched for me. Never a moment, never a moment they weren’t trying to save me.

Samantha Balaban and Ed McConnellty produced and edited the audio interview.