Hunter Biden’s lifelong addiction struggles laid bare in memoir Beautiful Things – from living with a cocaine addict to first drinking alcohol at the age of eight

Apr 8 , 2021

A 2009 photo of then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden with his son, Hunter Biden, in Washington. Hunter’s memoir Beautiful Things was released on April 6. Photo: AP

In his hard-hitting memoir, Hunter Biden says he once believed his superpower was ‘the ability to find crack in any town … no matter how unfamiliar the terrain’

Busted for drugs possession at 18, US President Joe Biden’s son cycled through addiction and rehab throughout his life as a family man, lawyer and lobbyist

President Joe Biden’s son Hunter details his lifelong struggle with alcoholism and drug abuse in a new memoir, writing that “in the last five years alone, my two-decades-long marriage has dissolved, guns have been put in my face, and at one point I dropped clean off the grid, living in US$59-a-night Super 8 motels off I-95 while scaring my family even more than myself.”

His “deep descent” into substance addiction followed the 2015 death of his older brother, Beau, who succumbed to brain cancer at age 46, Hunter Biden writes in Beautiful Things, which was released on April 6.

Beautiful Things, a memoir by Hunter Biden, the son of US President Joe Biden and a target for conservatives. Photo: Gallery Books via AP

“After Beau died, I never felt more alone. I lost hope,” he writes. He credits his second wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, with helping him sober up, along with the love from his father and late brother.

Before meeting his future wife in California, Hunter cycled through addiction, rehab and sobriety, all while managing to have a family and career as a lawyer and lobbyist. His family tried to intervene sometime in 2019 after his mother, Jill Biden, called and invited him to a family dinner in Delaware.

But Hunter sensed that more than a hot meal was on the table after he saw his three daughters and two counsellors from a Pennsylvania rehab centre where he had been a patient.

Former US Vice-President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden at an NCAA basketball game in Washington in 2010. Photo: Reuters

He swore at his father and bolted from the house, but was chased down the driveway by Joe Biden, who “grabbed me, swung me around, and hugged me. He held me tight in the dark and cried for the longest time. Everybody was outside now.”

To end the scene, Hunter agreed to check into a facility in Maryland. He was driven there by Beau’s widow, Hallie, with whom he had had a relationship. After she dropped him off, Hunter writes, he called an Uber, told the staff he would return in the morning and then checked into a hotel near Baltimore’s airport.

“For the next two days, while everybody who’d been at my parents’ house thought I was safe and sound at the centre, I sat in my room and smoked the crack I’d tucked away in my travelling bag,” he wrote. “I then boarded a plane for California and ran and ran and ran. Until I met Melissa.”

Then-Senator Joe Biden holds his daughter Ashley while taking a mock oath of office from Vice-President George Bush on Capitol Hill, Washington, January 1985. Biden’s sons Beau and Hunter hold the Bible during the ceremony. Photo: AP

The first drink Hunter remembers having was a flute of champagne. He was eight years old and at an election-night party in Delaware celebrating his father’s re-election to the Senate in 1978. He says he didn’t know what he was doing because “to me, champagne was just a fizzy drink”.