Jill Biden Opens Up About How Hunter’s Addiction Affected Their Family, Says 'Everyone Suffers'

Jill Biden opened up about the pain her family endured through her son Hunter Biden's addiction.

The former first lady, 75, discussed Hunter on "Dinner's on Me With Jesse Tyler Ferguson," describing a moment while recording the audiobook of her memoir when she had to say something aloud she'd never been able to voice.

"My son was a drug addict," she recalled reading, a line she said she could barely get out.

Jill said writing about Hunter's addiction in her memoir, A View from the East Wing, was hard enough, but that voicing it was even worse. She had written the words, she said, but had never spoken them.

"I couldn't say it. I mean, I kept trying to say it," she told host Jesse Tyler Ferguson, describing the recording session as "deeply painful."

The experience prompted some regret. Jill said she now believes she should have spoken more openly about addiction during her time as first lady, but that the subject was simply too difficult for her to address publicly at the time.

Jill said the hardest part as a mother was hearing her son recount the specifics of his drug use. Listening to him describe what he had done was more than she could bear, she said, adding that the details were almost impossible to take in. She said she was stunned reading Hunter's own account of that period.

"I was just shocked that he was still living," she said, explaining that the family had known some of what he was going through, but never the full extent.

She described the disorienting nature of loving someone in active addiction. People struggling with drugs are very good at disappearing, she said, then reappearing looking as though nothing had happened.

"They walk in your house like they haven't been gone for, like, two months," she lamented, only to leave again and reveal signs of the struggle, such as a hidden bottle tucked beneath a sink.

The former first lady was clear that addiction doesn't affect only the person living with it. It's hard for the addict, she said, but the pain radiates outward to everyone around them.

"Your whole family suffers," she said.

She added that she hoped speaking openly might give people trying to escape addiction a sense of hope that recovery is possible, pointing to Hunter, who she said had been in the depths of despair before turning his life around.

The conversation, recorded over a meal at a Beverly Hills restaurant, went far beyond her son's recovery. Jill also reflected on the final days of the Biden administration, shared memories of her early relationship with Joe Biden, and spoke about her bond with her sons, including her late stepson Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in 2015.

Hunter has been public about his addiction and recovery for years, writing about it in his own 2021 memoir. Jill's book, A View from the East Wing, is her account of her time as first lady and the personal moments that shaped it.