Hunter Biden’s addiction to drugs is a sad tale: One of the more salacious angles to the overarching Hunter Biden story is Biden’s extensive history of drug use.
While the ongoing House Oversight investigation into Biden isn’t drug-related, and while none of the prospective charges Biden faces are drug-related, the drug situiation still comes up regularly, acting as a lingering question over Biden’s character.
Hunter Biden and His Drug Addiction Story
By Biden’s own telling, drugs have been a foundational part of his life.
“At its heart, Hunter Biden’s new memoir, Beautiful Things, is a story of addiction,” NPR reported. “Biden, the 51-year-old son of the president, writes that he first bought crack cocaine at age 18.
He first fell in love with alcohol in high school and started drinking heavily after work in his 20s. “I always could drink five times more than anyone else,” he writes.”
Decades of Drug-Related Struggles
Biden has spent decades addressing his addiction issues, having checked in and out of rehab “numerous” times over two decades.
Hunter Biden has also enjoyed long periods of sobriety, which would inevitably conclude with Biden relapsing back into drug and alcohol use.
Biden’s story is punctuated not just with drug use, but with legitimate personal tragedy. While it’s become not just acceptable but also fashionable to call just about everything “traumatizing” and “tragic,”
Hunter Biden has experienced a traumatizing and tragic loss. His mother and sister were killed in a car crash when he was a young child. Hunter, and his brother Beau, were in the car and were seriously injured. Hunter would lose Beau, too; Beau died of brain cancer in 2015, at which point Biden’s addiction entered a “particularly dark phase.” So, Hunter Biden is not a wholly unsympathetic character. He’s been through tough times for sure.
Biden Opens Up About Addiction
In an interview with NPR, Biden opened up about his addiction issues – and how hard it was to extract himself from the situation.
“One of the things about being stuck in your addiction – there wasn’t much that I think any alcoholic, when they’re drinking, is rationally thinking. And that’s the reason why it’s such a hard thing to pull yourself out of,” Biden said.
Biden talked about the intervention his family staged, too.
“My dad grabbed me and he held onto me and put me in a bear hug and just said, “I don’t know what to do,” And even with all of that love, the feeling that overcame that love was my need for another hit, which is a hard thing to live with. But that’s what recovery is about – is getting honest with yourself and understanding the power of that drug or power of the addiction.”
While Biden is clean now, he said he “constantly” worried about relapsing.
“I have a healthy fear of relapse. It’s too much a part of my story. I’m only one choice away from being back exactly where I was. And that’s the conundrum for everyone that’s in recovery. It never goes away. It only hides.”
In the Spotlight
Republicans have identified Hunter Biden as the weakest link in Team Biden, so to speak, the surest path to damaging the president himself.
Hopefully, all ongoing inquiries into Biden and his past have the decency to sidestep Biden’s history of rampant drug abuse. Hunter Biden is not an elected official, and his drug history is not especially relevant.
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Besides, I’ve got a hunch that elected officials on both sides of the aisles have sons and daughters who have struggled with drug addiction.
Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
