Hunter claims to have been sober since 2019, two years before his father became the nation’s 46th president.
The former first son was candid about the darkest depths of his crippling alcohol and crack cocaine addiction in his 2021 memoir, Beautiful Things, and a series of revealing sit-downs while promoting it.
Hunter admitted in a CBS This Morning interview that “Most people who’ve gone through what I’ve gone through are either dead or in jail.”
While he had addiction issues stemming from the trauma of losing his mom, Neilia Biden, and baby sister in a car crash when he was 2 years old, it was the 2015 death of Hunter’s brother, Beau Biden, from brain cancer that he really began to spiral.
“Drinking a quart of vodka a day by yourself in a room is absolutely, completely debilitating,” Hunter told journalist Anthony Mason, adding that he was “smoking crack around the clock” and “drinking insanely lethal amounts of alcohol.”
Hunter credited meeting and marrying documentary filmmaker Melissa Cohen with helping him finally get clean.