Hunter Biden Is Out Of Secrets: A Story of Recovery, Exposure & Amends

**Rich Roll** (0:00)
This episode is brought to you by 8 Sleep. If you are new to the show, there's something you may not know about me, which is that for the last seven years, I have slept outdoors in a tent every night, because quality sleep does not come easy to me, and temperature regulation is the biggest reason why. And this is something I've solved by two things, the SoCal nights being generally cool year round, and then the 8 Sleep Pod 5, which regulates the temperature under my sheets to maximize deep sleep. Pod 5 is a smart mattress cover that goes right over your existing setup, and it cools or heats each side of the bed anywhere from 55 to 110 degrees, and then holds you there all night. It also tracks your sleep and recovery automatically, and quietly tunes the temperature over time to what actually works for your unique body. And in July, when the nights get warm and everyone quietly starts sleeping worse, that difference is everything. I don't say this lightly, the pod might be my favorite thing that I own, and I cannot imagine going back. Use my code Richroll at eatsleep.com/richroll for up to $350 off the pod. You get 30 days to try it at home and return it if you don't love it. But I'm pretty confident you will.

**Hunter Biden** (1:21)
I wish I could say I'm on my way to sainthood. I'm not even close on my way to sainthood.

**Rich Roll** (1:26)
You're a degenerate. Yeah, I am.

**Hunter Biden** (1:28)
It's exactly right.

**Rich Roll** (1:29)
Welcome to the club.

**Hunter Biden** (1:29)
Yeah. Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden.

**Andrew Yang** (1:33)
Hunter has been in the center of major political and legal controversies.

**Hunter Biden** (1:36)
Addresses his lifelong battle with addiction. When I took my first drink, it seemed to be an answer to everything. And then it wasn't just coke, it was crack. And then you chase that answer into your own prison cell. I had the binary choice of live or die.

**Rich Roll** (1:50)
The intensity of what you had to endure, like I don't think anybody can understand what that must have been like.

**Hunter Biden** (1:57)
I was given the greatest gift that any addict could ever ask for if they can survive it. Total and complete exposure. That has stuck with me. The shame. I don't know why I'm even telling you this right now.
If you think that you are alone, I'm here to tell you, you can make it.

**Rich Roll** (2:25)
It's great to have you here, man. I'm so excited to talk to you. We have a bunch of points of intersection. We're both of a certain age. We're about the same age.
And we both came up in and around DC in the late 80s and early 90s. I was doing what I was doing and you were in and out. I mean, you went to Georgetown. Parents live in Georgetown. I was thinking this morning, there's a fairly decent chance we might have been at the same bar at the same time.

**Hunter Biden** (2:57)
Oh, I promise you. If you were at any of them.

**Rich Roll** (3:00)
Partying and not realizing it, it's laudatory, this mission that you're on. I mean, there are very few people whose lives are not touched by addiction either directly or indirectly or tangentially.
I see you as somebody who has done a lot of work and is now whole enough to enter the public sphere and talk about this not from a perspective of trying to repair your public image, but from a real service-oriented motivation to advance understanding and compassion around this cunning, baffling, and powerful disease that has afflicted you, it's afflicted me. It's an animating reason why I do this podcast. And even if it impacts one life positively and saves them from some of the suffering that you suffered and I have suffered, then it's worth it. And it comes across loud and clear. It's clear that's why you're doing it. Where does the addiction story begin for you?

**Hunter Biden** (4:14)
I first got sober in 2003 I'm gonna go back.
And when I first, the first time I got sober, which I stayed sober for an extended period of time, I was a firm believer in the idea that, you know, I was a drunk because I was genetically predisposed to be a drunk and then that's it. And there doesn't have to be any other reason.

**Rich Roll** (4:37)
I mean, that's very much an AA thing. It's like, we don't really need to spend a lot of time wondering why, you know? And I'm starting to change my mind about that.