Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, opened up about his addiction and sobriety Thursday during the inaugural Matthew Perry Foundation summit on addiction and recovery.
“I am more at peace with myself than I’ve ever been in my entire life. I am healthier than I’ve ever been in my entire life,” he said, appearing via Zoom video, during a conversation with NPR’s Brian Mann at CAA headquarters in Century City. “And I’m more certain of who I am than I’ve ever been in my entire life.”
Biden actually credited the media scrutiny he faced over his addiction for helping him get sober. “I had to play out my recovery in the early days and even today, in kind of the white hot spotlight, The Daily Mail, The New York Post, The New York Times and Fox News,” he said.
He says he found relief in having his addiction exposed and then talking publicly about being addicted to crack cocaine. “I was given the gift of not having any more secrets,” Biden said, adding, “I truly believe that that’s probably the thing that has allowed me to stay clean and sober beyond the love and support of my family and my own — I’m really proud of myself for having six years right now — is not having any of those secrets. It’s all out there.”
Biden said he believes his addiction is rooted in trauma, although he didn’t detail any specific experiences. “One of the things about addiction — that I think is very, very difficult for people who are not addicts themselves or addicts in recovery to understand — is the why of it. The why of it is very simple, at least from my perspective, and that’s because it works,” he said. “It does for a moment. It relieves that pain, that interminable anxiety, that feeling that if you don’t get relief that you’re going to die and how every synapse in your brain is screaming at you to take a drink or a drug to get relief.”
The summit was a gathering of people from the entertainment business as well as the recovery and philanthropic sectors.
Biden said he no longer worries about what people think or say about him. He called out President Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, for falsely accusing him of being high during a recent podcast interview.
“I don’t have to hide anymore. There’s not another shoe that’s going to drop — at least not another shoe that’s true,” he said. “I have been freed from having to tell white lies anymore about who I am or who I was and the places that I found myself in addiction.”
Biden went to rehab nine times.
“What my family never did is they never let me go,” Biden said. “I tried. I tried with all my might to disappear. But they never, ever, ever cut the cord in the sense they cut the cord in terms of any the support that would further my addiction. But my dad, he literally never stopped. Ultimately, when I was ready to reach up from the bottom of the well and pull myself out, which I had to do, I knew that there was a hand there.”