I didn’t know what to expect when I met Hunter Biden. Would he have the Secret Service with him? Would he be cold? Would he be an asshole?
Biden, who is in recovery, was coming on my podcast, Dopey: On the Dark Comedy of Drug Addiction. He is exactly the kind
of person I like to have on the show. When I started it in 2016 with my friend Chris O’Connor, our plan was to create a podcast all around the worst things we had ever done in active addiction. Chris wound up relapsing and tragically dying from a fentanyl overdose in 2018. I kept the show going, still focused on the insanity of addiction and ways that we can overcome it.
A few weeks ago, I flew to Los Angeles for the interview with Hunter Biden, and we met in a studio in Santa Monica, near where he lives. Biden casually arrived through the sunny back door. He was alone, came in smiling, and gave me a big, warm hug — not a weird, manipulative hug, which can be prevalent in the recovery community. It turned out we had mutual friends, and he knew about my podcast and how we were basically a for-addict-by-addict operation. He was happy to be there, and he fit right in.
I wanted Biden to come on the show because I know he was a drug addict like the other Dopes in the Dopey Nation. His exploits as a crack addict were legendary, his fall was well known and epic. The only difference between his story and our listeners’ stories was that their fathers hadn’t been president, and they haven’t been on the cover of the New York Post more than, as he puts it, “more than anyone else in history.” There is scrutiny, and there is Hunter Biden-level scrutiny. People struggling with addiction often feel the weight of the world on them. In Biden’s case, it kind of was on him. Pictures of him, naked and high, were plastered on TV screens around the world. His father’s political enemies used his problems with crack to try and erode trust in the Biden administration. His addiction or sobriety became connected to the state of our nation.
How did he get sober? What is it like to have the bar on his recovery set so high? The answers to these questions are very important to our community of addicts and alcoholics, both in and out of recovery.
During the interview, Biden and I covered a lot of ground. There was the basic Recovery 101 stuff, the immense trauma he suffered from losing his mother and sister in a horrific car accident when he was three years old. How his addiction began, and how the death in 2015 of his brother Beau, just 46, pushed him over the edge into crack addiction. And maybe most importantly we spoke of how meeting his now-wife Melissa set him on his current path of over seven years in recovery. We also covered some of his craziest moments using drugs; my favorite being the story of when he moved his crack dealer, whom he called Bicycles, into his apartment, and what it was like when his father, who was then the Vice President of the United States, arrived by presidential motorcade and met Bicycles face to face. It turned out to be one of my favorite talks in Dopey history.
The whole interview can be foundon my podcast, but here are some highlights of our conversation.
Hunter Biden talked about the destruction his addiction caused his family, especially his young daughters. We also spoke about how recovery cannot completely undo the impact.
What is the trickiest part of sharing your recovery story with the public in general?
We get to talk about the beauty of our recovery and all the things that we’ve gained, like the amends that we get to make and what a wonderful existence that I am free to talk about anything I want. And I wanna make it clear that the hardest part of recovery and addiction is the effect on the people around us, the traumas that we put them through.
Like I always say, the biggest thing with my daughters was that I just was not available to them. I wasn’t present in their lives during that period of time.
Well, it’s a hell of a lot more fucking complicated than that. And a lot more traumatic than just that. And it’s easy for me to say, and we have a great relationship and we’ve amended everything. But when the shit really hit the fan with my addiction, they were in their formative years, between 16 and 20 and 21.
They really needed me when my brother died — my brother was their rock. My brother was their second dad and in every beautiful way that you can imagine. They loved their Uncle Beau. And when he died, I disappeared.
Cause you were destroyed.
I was destroyed. But my reasoning or the rationale or my experience doesn’t matter to the trauma that it creates in a child. I have all my reasons for why I lost my shit. But you know what? Doesn’t matter. What really was the thing is that when they needed me most, I wasn’t there. And you can live a life trying to make amends for that. But I think it’s really important for me to always remember… they’re still living with the trauma of it.
Biden and I spoke about a woman he calls Bicycles, who was a crack-cocaine dealer who moved into his apartment in Washington, D.C. She was a fascinating character in his memoir, and I was dying to hear the story.
Tell the Dopey Nation all about Bicycles, please.
Well, Bicycles has been on the street basically her whole life, since she was like 13, 14 years old. She would tell these stories about how, for periods of time, the way that she survived is that she would sneak into motels when they were changing rooms, just to get sleep, and she would hide under the bed and sleep there. She would go into police stations and she would hide underneath the bench, and sleep underneath the bench, when she couldn’t find a place to stay. And she had this incredible story of resilience and survival, and she was incredibly smart. I mean like quick-witted, a fast-thinking survivor.
She was about 15 years older than me, and she rode everywhere on her bike. I knew that she was a crack addict, and so I walked over to Lincoln Park — and I was like, “Hey, I want some crack.”
And she said, “You sure?”
Did she know who you were?
No, I don’t think so. She says, “Are you sure?” And I said, “Yeah.”
And she sold it to me. Then she showed me how to smoke it and gave me all the necessary things to smoke it. And I did. And I had what they refer to as a bell-ringer experience, and it was revelatory. It was the answer to everything. I even suppressed the visceral memory of it right now because it was that profound and powerful. And then that began a two-year odyssey of chasing that singular moment.
Biden and I spoke about his father’s reaction to his drug addiction. How Joe Biden, like most fathers, wanted the best for his son, and how addicts tend to lie to their parents to protect their addiction. The only difference was, when Hunter was going through it, his father was Vice President.
Does your dad ever meet Bicycles?
He’d call and he’d call. And then when he wouldn’t get the calls, he literally would drive over with a motorcade, as small as he could possibly make it.
I’d hear all these cars, and I’d see like six SUVs pull up and my dad get out and and walk with one or two of the guys — because they have to be next to him — and I’d hear a knock on my door and I’d open it. There I would be with all of the obviousness of someone that was in distress. And he’d say, “Please, what are we gonna do tomorrow? What’s the plan?”
And I’d say, “I got a plan, and this is what it is. And I promise you, Dad, I’m all right. I just am feeling really sad. Sad about the divorce, sad about the kids, sad about Beau. Just let me deal.”
We make all of these excuses for all the things that we do.
Tell us about how your dad tried to help get you sober.
Here’s the thing: you can’t force anybody. I mean you can; you can grab them and kidnap them like they do with these poor kids, and send them out into the wilderness, and I guarantee you there’s a 98 percent recidivism rate with those people.
Talk about creating more trauma.
Yeah, and less trust. And so he was wise enough to know that. And he was wise enough to know this: All you can do is love. And unconditional love is not love without consequences. And unconditional love is not love without accountability. Unconditional love means that no matter what you do, I will still love you. No matter what the consequences of what you’re doing, I will still love you, and that was the door that he always, not just left open, but would always be calling from.
Biden has been painting a lot recently, posting his work on social media. We talked about some of his recent subject matter, which was inspired by a profound encounter he had with an owl on his way to a treatment center.
What is your painting process? How do you pick your subjects?
I know why I paint owls because there’s a really beautiful story about an owl that I have.
Tell me a little bit of that story, please.
Well, I don’t know if it was a hallucination. I think part of it was definitely a hallucination, but it doesn’t matter because it was a real outcome. And the outcome was that I had been up for literally over 10 days and smoking crack. I had agreed to go to this treatment [center] in Arizona.
I kept saying I’d come and I wouldn’t and I wouldn’t, and finally I got my shit together enough to pack everything, put it in a rental car, and drive to Prescott [Arizona]. At one point, there are eight lanes with that giant gully in the middle, and I hit it. I fell asleep. And this is, like, a funny story for me. What if I killed 10 people?
Well you didn’t, thank God.
Thank God.
I called the rental car company and they got me a new car. They bring it and they ask, “What happened?”
I said, “Somebody ran me off the road.”
They said, “How are you going in the wrong direction?” I said, “Man, I don’t know,” like this was God’s way.
That’s crazy.
I get back in the car, and in order to be able to go to Prescott, you have to go through the mountains. And it’s literally windy roads, and it’s four o’clock in the morning. I mean no amount of crack that I have left to smoke or anything is keeping me awake and if you doze off on that road, you’re done. I mean completely done; it’s like a sheer cliff kind of road. And I swear to God, this giant barn owl flies over — well, I assume over the roof — right in front of the windshield and into the beams of the light of the car in front of me, enough to where it kind of jolts me awake.
I’m looking at this giant owl in front of me, and it makes the turn along the road. So, I make the turn. And then it keeps coming back, and it’s literally guiding me through these windy roads.
Now it had to be a hallucination, right?
I don’t know.
I think it was just a psychedelic spirit.
You know what I know, though? Whatever that was, it was real to me at that moment, and it saved my life. And I got to Prescott.
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