Hunter Biden opens up about addiction, warns shame perpetuates 'devastating' spiral

By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter Saturday, May 23, 2026

Hunter Biden opened up about his struggles with addiction and the difference between guilt and shame in handling the consequences of sin during a two-hour interview with podcaster Candace Owens that aired Thursday.

"I've heard you call me a crackhead many times, and the truth of it is I was a crackhead," the second son of former President Joe Biden told Owens, who apologized for repeatedly attacking both him and his father over the years.

Noting both he and Owens are Roman Catholic, Biden appealed to theological concepts to explain that people struggling with addiction — which he noted is approximately 30 million Americans — should avoid the isolating effects of shame and realize they are not alone.

POWERFUL: Hunter Biden opens up to Candace Owens about how he went from Yale Law School grad to crack addict.

Hunter was sober for 7 years when ONE DRINK on a plane led to years of hell on earth.

This is the story of addiction. pic.twitter.com/fSZ4KAUD2h

— Chris Nelson ????????????? (@ReOpenChris) May 22, 2026

"I think that people that are addicts, or that are in recovery also, [what] you find out really fast is that you're not as terminally unique as you think you are," he said. "One of the things that is really important about addicts talking to each other and talking about it is that realization, because one of the things that traps you in your addiction is shame."

Biden said guilt is an appropriate emotion in response to having done wrong and should prompt one to seek forgiveness, but that shame is "just absolutely corrosive."

"Shame is you telling yourself that you're not worthy, that you're never going to be worthy, that the things that you've done, you can never be redeemed from," he said.

Biden, who said he has been sober since 2019, acknowledged that he has "done horrible things" to damage his relationships by his wrong decisions, which became front-page news when the sexually explicit contents of his personal laptop were leaked and reported by the New York Post, weeks before the 2020 presidential election.

The laptop contents also prompted allegations of familial corruption when it showed Hunter had introduced his father to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before then-Vice President Joe Biden pressured Ukrainian officials to fire a prosecutor who was investigating the company.

Claiming he was overwhelmed with shame when the story broke, Hunter Biden told Owens that he considered death, but decided instead to keep living, which he said has given him the ability "to own all of my story without shame or fear."

"The thing for any addict to do is not only get honest with the people that they love, but to get honest with themselves," he said. "And until they can, until they can really see themselves for who they are — all of it — and decide to love themselves, then the cycle is just going to continue. At least, in my experience, that's the truth."

Biden, who first struggled with alcoholism before getting sober in his early 30s, said his descent back into habitual drunkenness and drug use after seven years of sobriety began in 2010, when he was alone on an airplane and gave in to an impulse to have what he thought would be one drink.

"It was just such a mundane, stupid story," he said. "I was on a plane by myself. Everything was OK, things were looking up. It was, you know, normal life pressures, but it was all good. And that's the real insidious thing about addiction and alcoholism. It never goes away necessarily."

"There's always the answer that is being presented to you by the thing that you trust the most, which is your brain. And what it says is: if you don't want to feel this way, whatever the way is, or if you want to feel this way even more, I have the answer for you."

Biden said his drink on the airplane "started a cycle of relapse and recovery" that sent him into a downward spiral, leading him to being dishonest with those who loved him because he was ashamed and wanted to hide his failure.

When his older brother, Beau Biden, died from brain cancer in 2015, Hunter said his life "fell apart." He reflected with disgust on his "devastating" memory of crawling through the carpet to find bits of crack cocaine, but noted that his shame and self-loathing only perpetuated his desire to escape such feelings with more drugs.

"The shame is thinking of yourself like that, regardless of who you are; regardless of where you came from. Whether your dad's the president of the United States, it doesn't matter," he said, adding that he believes alcohol "is the most dangerous drug in the world."

Biden, who received a full and unconditional presidential pardon from his father in 2024 for tax evasion in California and gun charges in Delaware, has moved out of the United States amid mounting legal challenges, according to court documents filed last month.