USA TODAY International Edition
5 jaw- dropping moments in Hunter Biden’s book
The president’s son gets personal in “Beautiful Things,” including about past drug abuse.
Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, has seen his fair share of ugly things. His alcohol and drug addiction sent him spiraling for years and led him to cook his own crack cocaine. But he’s seen a lot of beautiful things, too – namely the love he shares with his father and brother Beau Biden, who died of glioblastoma in 2015.
Biden wrote about all of it in in his memoir, “Beautiful Things” ( Gallery Books, 255 pp.), out April 6. His candid chronicle of his drug- and alcoholfueled binges and relationship with Beau’s widow, Hallie Biden, are sure to shock – but don’t let all the tabloid fodder fool you. Biden has found love again with new wife Melissa, whom he credits for getting him back on the winding path to sobriety.
“Where’s Hunter?” was a rallying cry from former President Donald Trump to try and smear Joe Biden. “I’m not going anywhere,” Biden writes. “I’m not a curio or sideshow to a moment in history, as all the cartoonish attacks try to paint me.”
Yes, the book touches on Trump and Biden’s Ukraine business, but more compelling are the vulnerable, human details of Biden’s personal life. Here’s what we learned about Biden by reading his devastating memoir.
Biden has been through more than most would dare to imagine. He and Beau were in the 1972 car accident that killed his baby sister and mother. It’s a moment that defined not only Joe, but his sons. Biden doesn’t think he fully came to terms with the violence of it.
“I don’t see that tragic moment as necessarily resulting in behaviors that lent themselves to addiction,“he writes. “But I do have a better understanding of why I feel the way I do sometimes.”
He took his first drink – a glass of champagne the night his father was reelected to the Senate in 1978 – when he was 8 years old. He drank more when he was 14, even though he knew he shouldn’t be doing it. He went to Mass with a hangover and threw up outside during the service.
His drinking followed him into adulthood ( he attended Georgetown University and later Yale Law School). After his third daughter, Maisy, was born in 2000 to then- wife Kathleen, he started to drink more heavily. He ultimately went to rehab in Antigua and remained sober – for a time.
In November 2010, Biden relapsed and had three Bloody Marys on a plane; when his father joined Obama’s ticket in 2008, he had to upend his career because of his lobbying work ( it would be a conflict of interest). He “had huge expenses and no savings, and now I had to bust my ( expletive) to build another career from scratch.”
After Beau’s death, everything Biden did “for the next four years, resulted in me stumbling, then sliding, then racing downhill.” As his marriage to Kathleen fell apart, he returned to rehab and tried to stay on the straight and narrow. His drinking, however, only worsened. “I was drowning myself in alcohol,” he says.
With the encouragement of his father, he again went to get clean. “Left on my own, I’m certain I would not have survived,” he writes.
By Memorial Day 2016, however, someone offered Biden cocaine. He took it.
This led to his buying crack cocaine in Washington from Rhea – a homelesswoman he met while he was at Georgetown. Rhea is a pseudonym, Biden writes.
“I spent a couple of thousand dollars on crack in those first two weeks, with Rhea serving as my conduit,” he writes. She even moved into his apartment and stayed there for approximately five months. When he’s strong enough, he says he hopes to see her again and help “get her in a position where she wants to be saved.”
‘ I was smoking crack every 15 minutes’
In the spring of 2018, he used his “superpower – finding crack anytime, anywhere” – in Los Angeles. At one point, a dealer pointed a gun at his head before he realized Biden was looking for drugs.
He later learned how to cook drugs and spent a lot of time with thieves, addicts and con artists. “I never slept. There was no clock. Day bled into night and night into day,” he writes.
The situation grew out of control. “I was smoking crack every 15 minutes,” he writes.
Biden returned to the East Coast in the fall of 2018, again wanting to get better, though that didn’t happen.
Eventually, his family tried to stage an intervention. “I don’t know what else to do,” Joe Biden told him. “I’m so scared. Tell me what to do.” His son replied: “Not ( expletive) this.”
It wasn’t until he met Melissa Cohen in Los Angeles – whom he married after only a week of knowing – that he got sober again. They told each other they loved each other on their first date; she had the same eyes as Beau, he writes. She championed his sobriety and dumpedhis crack.
Hunter’s relationship with Hallie doomed from the start
Hallie and Biden connected – romantically – in the wake of Beau’s death, between their grief and Biden’s addiction. His then- wife Kathleen discovered texts between them on an old iPad. “That gave her the gift of justification: I was the sicko sleeping with my brother’s wife,” he writes.
But once they tried living together full- time, it didn’t work.
“It was a giant miscalculation on both our parts, errors in judgment born of a uniquely tragic time,” he writes. And later, when they tried to rekindle their romance after he got sober ( again) in January 2018, it didn’t work. “It felt like a failure of epic proportions,” he writes.
‘ Beautiful Things’ is from Beau
Beau’s mantra to his brother during his illness was “beautiful things.” He wanted them to “dedicate our lives to appreciating and cultivating the world’s boundless beauty” – referencing relationships, places and moments.
“It was our code for a renewed outlook on life,” he writes. Shortly before Beau died, Biden promised him he would stay strong and sober. Beau had gone with him to his first AA meetings, found him his first sponsor and taken him to rehab plenty of times.
“I had no idea then how many dead- end detours I’d take before I could finally keep those promises,” he writes.
Still, “Beautiful Things” serves as a fitting title, considering the book closes with a letter to Beau.
“I’ve survived, buddy,” the letter reads. “I know you were with me through it all.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse or addiction, you can call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration National Helpline at 800- 662- HELP ( 4357)