Hunter Biden went deep during a three-hour interview on Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan in July, opening up about how the media covered his crack cocaine addiction, his journey in sobriety and yes, that infamous laptop. But the moment that generated the most headlines came when Biden took aim at George Clooney by saying “fuck him and everyone around him” in response to the actor’s column in The New York Times suggesting President Joe Biden drop out of the 2024 election.
After the self-described “passionate” diatribe, Biden, a frequent target of conservatives and critics of his father, once again became a topic of conversation. Because he used foul language and grew emotional in defending his father, critics assumed that he was back on drugs. “Don and Eric [Trump] went on TV and said that I was smoking crack still, and obviously I had a drug problem. [Former Fox News host turned United States attorney for the District of Columbia] Jeanine Pirro said that when I got a haircut, I must have done that because I was getting drug tested,” Biden recalled Thursday as he participated in the Matthew Perry Foundation’s first-ever summit at CAA headquarters in Los Angeles.
Though he’s been the target of such attacks for years, Biden told the summit that he’s no longer letting such baseless chatter affect him, especially now that he’s been sober for six years. “I don’t care. I truly don’t care. I had to make a decision that I’m not going to care about what other people think of me, otherwise I would never get out of bed in the morning,” continued Biden, appearing from out of the country on Zoom in CAA’s private theater while speaking with NPR’s Brian Mann, the outlet’s first national addiction correspondent. The theater hosted Matthew Perry Foundation co-founders Doug Chapin and Lisa Kasteler-Calio, his former CAA agent Peter Levine, Warner Bros. Television Group executive vp of publicity and communications Rebecca Marks, CAA’s Kevin Huvane and Hylda Queally and The Pitt creator R. Scott Gemmill, the latter of whom participated in a conversation about how his Emmy winning show tackles substance use.
While Biden’s comments are newsworthy, the context of what he said also fit nicely into the summit’s theme of stigma around substance abuse and addiction. It’s a topic Biden knows a lot about and he shared about the shame that he carried as he battled his addiction, giving credit to his family for never giving up on him even while his dark secrets became fodder for tabloids and his father’s political opponents.
“There’s not a family in this country that doesn’t have direct experience with substance use disorder and addiction, whether it’s alcohol or whether it’s crack cocaine. What I really hope is that what I’m able to do is just talk as honestly about it with anyone who wants to talk about it, to give them the hope that today 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, and I’m more certain of who I am than I’ve ever been in my entire life,” Biden explained, adding that he arrived at such a peaceful place thanks to his recovery and owning his story before others could. “The hard part is I made a decision that I was going to be transparent before transparency was forced on me. I did an interview with Adam Entous at The New Yorker. People thought I was crazy at the time, largely because of how honest I was. I didn’t say that I was an addict or that I just used cocaine. I talked about the fact that I was crack addict, and when you say you’re a crack addict, understandably, people have been conditioned to believe something that is monstrous. They still throw that in my face today.”
He remains unfazed.
“[Peace] was amazingly given to me by the people that attacked me, and it was given to me in the sense that 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. 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,” continued Biden, who revealed that he first discovered he had a problem with alcohol at age 33. Now 55, Biden has been to eight or nine rehabs and checked into multiple outpatient programs. “Nobody comes into recovery on a winning streak. Nobody. And I have been in rooms that I know that I just couldn’t die in…without being incredibly shamed, and I’m free of that now. I wish I could give that to everybody, but it is so hard.”
He said the “level of shaming” that he’s experienced over the last five years has been unlike anything he’s experienced in his life. But he also put himself through the ringer over not being available to his three daughters while he was in active addiction. “I had an enormous amount of shame over that. And ironically because of the position that I found myself in with my dad running for president and before that [while he was in office], and the incredible focus that they had on me, I was given the gift of not having any more secrets to have to hide,” Biden said. “You’d think that I’m exaggerating, but 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. I’m also really proud of myself for having six years [of sobriety] right now. I was given the gift of not having any more of those secrets. It is all out there for anyone to see.”
Biden added that while he still may be in the “white hot spotlight” of news outlets like The Daily Mail, The New York Post, The New York Times and Fox News, he’s still got an army of loved ones by his side.
“I had people that no matter what would stand by my side, love and respect me, beginning with my dad most importantly, but also my children and my wife, my mom and my sister and an entire network of people that I know I would not have made it without,” he concluded. “What my family never did is they never let me go. I tried with all my life to disappear, but they never, ever, ever cut the cord. They cut the cord in terms of anything 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.”
