Hunter Biden Attributes His Addiction to His Mother's 1972 Tragic Car Crash: Serious Trauma'

In an interview with CBS News in 2021, Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, discussed his turbulent personal past, including his years of horrifying drug addiction before his eventual journey to recovery. During one of the interviews for his book, Beautiful Things, Hunter claimed, "I am more convinced now that trauma was at the center of it." Hunter claimed that his addiction stemmed from the 1972 vehicle accident that claimed the lives of his mother Neilia and his little sister Naomi. 

As reported by The Independent, he admitted, "I don't know why I had such a hard time ever admitting that. There's a lot of research that points to the idea that addicts who suffer from addiction suffer from trauma. Beau and I never grieved the loss of our mother and sister. We talked about my mom all the time, but the accident no. The darkness that I know my dad suffered isn't something we talked about until much later. This is why I don't want to admit...we probably should have. I think they were trying to protect us." Hunter's book mostly describes his struggles over the years. The term 'beautiful things' is a reference to his late brother Beau since it was a common phrase he used when reminiscing happier times.

Hunter admitted to CBS that he would consume a 'quart of vodka'—an 'insanely lethal' quantity of alcohol—every day. He admitted, "I spent more time on my hands and knees picking through rugs, smoking anything that even remotely resembled crack cocaine. I probably smoked more Parmesan cheese than anyone that you know."

Elaborating on an incident, he shared, "I went one time for 13 days without sleeping, and smoking crack and drinking vodka exclusively throughout that entire time." Hunter also appeared on Bryony Gordon's Mad World podcast the same year to promote his book and he addressed some of the most difficult as well as encouraging things he had learned over his years-long cycle of drug misuse. 

As reported by People, he told Gordon, "The thing that I think trapped me in my addiction was this idea that no one could possibly understand me. No one could possibly have gone through what I've gone through— the degradation, the feeling of shame and guilt, the feeling of just abject loneliness that you feel in addiction. And you think, I don't have anybody to talk to, no one could understand me. And that's one of the reasons why I was so intent on writing a book that told it all." He added, "I think that there's only one thing that human beings are guaranteed in life, and that's pain. That's the only guarantee is that you will suffer from loss. You'll have your struggles. And that pain, and what we do with it, is the real question of how our lives will unfold."