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

32:19Instead, it appears in a form so ordinary that it passes unnoticed at first, the way a small seed disappears into soil before anyone thinks to mark where it landed. The moment usually occurs during something unremarkable. Driving home from work, sitting alone at a kitchen table after the house has gone quiet, walking past a place that used to mean something else. The mind drifts, and somewhere inside the drift, a sentence begins to assemble itself. Not a declaration, more like a suggestion. Maybe things are different now. The sentence is so small that it hardly feels like a decision. It feels like curiosity.

32:59The mind turns it over once, then sets it down again. A person who has lived through addiction knows this moment well enough to distrust it, but distrust alone is rarely enough to erase it. The thought remains. And once it remains, it begins to grow. Not all at once, slowly, the way a root system spreads beneath the ground where no one can see it. The mind begins constructing explanations around the idea. The explanations feel reasonable because they borrow the language of responsibility and self-control. You have learned something. You understand the consequences now. You are not the person you were then.

33:37The thought becomes a narrative. The narrative becomes a permission structure. And by the time the person recognizes what has happened, the small seed that appeared earlier in the day has grown into something much larger, an oak tree in the middle of the mind. At that point, the relapse is already underway. The substance comes later. I mean, that's so beautiful. It's a very eloquent and poetic way of saying, you know, the relapse train pulls out of the station well before the drink, and it is this seed of a thought that at its inception, you know, is crazy and insane. But if you don't find a way to deal with it, it will linger.

34:22And it is a seed that you will unconsciously fertilize to the point where it's impossible. Like by the time you pick up the drink or the drug, like there's no thought involved, like it's a done deal. And sometimes it's a conscious decision. And sometimes it's that unconscious thing where, you know, You hear these stories all the time, like, oh, I was in this situation, and then it just occurred to me to order the drink, and then I was drinking, and I don't even know how it happened. Well, it happened because of all the things that you just kind of beautifully elaborated on. The only thing, at least this is my talk about the work, the only thing that I allow myself to live in fear of is my own mind.

35:07And it is like just you reading that back to me gave me chills because every addict knows exactly what it's like. Yeah. I mean, that was like reading my mind. Yeah. And the hardest, hardest thing, at least for me, one of the hardest things in recovery is in any way trying to articulate to those who have not experienced the why of it. Like how? How? Like all the work that you put in, all of the healing that had been done, all of the consequences that you know that you're going to face. There's a scene in that movie that kind of got panned with Denzel Washington, you know where he's the flight. Yeah, a friend of mine wrote that movie.

35:58Yeah. So that scene, you'll know the one I'm talking about. It's the most accurate description of alcoholism on screen that I've ever seen. Ever seen. And it's him in the hotel room. He knows that he has the biggest day in his life. That if he just makes it through this, he's back in the captain's chair. And that everybody on screen that has not experienced addiction looked at what he did and thought that that was a Hollywood bullshit. Like, of course, he wouldn't go into the mini bar and drink the mini bar. but i mean you just you know exactly what's gonna happen it's gonna happen yeah so it is and uh today is different but i really lived like this today like i did not wake up today and and there was not even a seed um and there's also i don't know with you about you I know for me, there's this delicate dance of not giving these experiences and this knowledge too much weight that it paralyzes you in your life.

37:15While at the same time, being constantly aware of that in your life. Here's another really selfish reason why I'm doing what I'm doing right now. You know, I say because it's in service to other people that are still out there sick and suffering. The real honest answer is, is first and foremost, it's in service to myself. Is the person that I'm helping the most by speaking about my experience is me. Yeah. Yeah, service being this cornerstone of recovery, like you're not gonna be able to maintain long-term sobriety if you're not of service to those that are still suffering. And that comes across as some kind of sacrifice or martyrdom, but the truth is, is there's a selfish motive to this.

38:14Like it's actually like selfish service because in sponsoring somebody else or showing up for somebody else, this is more healing to you than it is to the other person. And it's a necessary aspect of disabusing yourself of the obsession of the mind and investing yourself in the wellbeing of somebody else that is essential to maintaining sobriety. So it is a selfish act to be selfless in your service. And if service feels like annoying or inconvenient or whatever, couching it in those selfish terms makes it easier to pick up the phone and call that person who's having a hard time when you're sitting and spinning and lost in thought and like just, you know, kind of rehashing what happened yesterday or, you know, like terrified about what's going to happen tomorrow.

39:02Yeah. You know, as much as I was exposed, you know, there are those moments in my addiction in which I, you know, that I still experience as, you know, as like real, you know traumas um and and left to my own devices and in my own head you know they become that seed and so again like the big thing though is like wish i could say here's like i'm i'm i'm on my way to sainthood i'm not even fucking close on my way to you're a fucking degenerate yeah i am I am. It's exactly right. Welcome to the club. Yeah. At the core of all of this is resentment. Resentment is always gonna lead you back to relapse.

39:57Resentment is an indulgence that the addict or the alcoholic cannot afford. And I don't know if there's anyone on planet earth who is more entitled to resent certain people than you. Like so many people directly vilified you. You know, it's absurd to call it the town square. I mean, like globally, right? So I'm interested in how you were able to relinquish what I'm sure were deep-seated resentments against these people who were attacking you for things that were not evidence-based or unfairly or whatever in your mind. Okay, everybody's going to get mad at me. But, again, why do you think I went on Tucker Carlson?

40:48Because one of my deepest resentments— So that you could overcome your resentment towards him. Yeah. You know, I know Tucker for 30 years, and I didn't know him well. We weren't close friends in any way. Did you know him from the program? No, I didn't know him from the program. But he lived in the same neighborhood in Spring Valley where I was, and we had a lot of mutual friends going back to the time when, you know, my high school girlfriend went to high school with him i mean i i've known tucker and his wife and my wife at the time had became running buddies and friends and and and so we were never friends but we were um but but we knew each other and we were acquaintances and which makes all the vilification on his part all the more painful yeah because you had a you already because he was saying wasn't true and what can i do um in service i think part of services is that you need to do things in service of yourself even if they're hard and resentments are the hardest and like you said i have resentments towards you know miranda divine at the new york post and i have resentments towards and what i've decided is is that um i just have to just go head on and um you know when tucker asked if i wanted to talk to him i said yeah i do because Number one, it gave me a lot of anxiety.

42:25And I've decided to do everything that I'm scared of doing. I used to be scared to sit down. You put a microphone at me. And it was hard for me to formulate my thoughts as fast as I wanted to or to sound as good as I thought that I needed to sound or to not stammer a little bit and take out all the ands and buts and ums. And I don't even think about that anymore. And part of the reason is, is because I keep in the back of my mind, Rich has seen the worst of me. And I don't have to pretend to be anything other than the person that I am sitting in front of him right now. Or make excuses or defend myself in any way.

43:13I just need to be me. And you don't need anything from that other person. Like if you were to say everything Tucker said about you negatively and clipped it together into like it would probably be hours of, you know, just something very difficult to sit through. And then you're sitting across from him and he's, he's like pretty cheery about, it's not like he's like, oh my God, you know, I can't believe I saw, you know, there's none of that. Right. But I also didn't get the sense that you needed that from him. No, I didn't. You know, you were just like, I'm here to like overcome my own resentment.

43:54Yeah. Yeah. And it has nothing to do with how he responds to me. It's all about my relationship to this dynamic. It's the reverse of what we learn about forgiveness is that we as addicts have to seek amends and we have to seek forgiveness, but not the result of it. The act of actually going in and saying you're sorry with sincerity is not about whether or not that person forgives you. It's about the fact that you do it. Again, it's incredibly selfish. And the same thing with resentment. is it's it's my thing it's not theirs i it's it's for me to lay down yeah and um because i i i could live the rest of my life just filled with hate over what they did to me and how they did you know how i think about it now they gave me the most incredible beautiful gift that i've ever been given in my entire life which was complete and total liberty complete freedom from all of my secrets complete freedom from all of the shame they gave me this incredible chance at a life in which i could simply be who i am everything and and every day trying to do the next right thing and failing so often like i I guarantee you I'm going to do enough things in this podcast alone to piss off 30 % of the people that will be on here calling me a pedophile and this and that and the other thing.

45:32They make decisions and do things that are, you know, but it doesn't even remotely affect me. Now, I'm open to criticism. You know what I mean? I'm open if I'm going to be public and I'm going to be talking, then I should be responsible for the things that I say and hopefully not be misleading or doing something in a way that is hurtful or harmful to somebody else. but you know uh again like i wish i could say that you know you know that this practice that i had that came to me through this an enormous amount of like hard work and i moved to rishi cash and i lived with a monk for seven years and i you know and and i practiced but most of it was just pure survival.

46:23Yeah.

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49:10I completely understand this notion of your ego death being a gift. I imagine that's difficult for the average person who hasn't kind of flirted in this world to really get their heads around. So I think it would be good if you could talk a little bit more in explaining that. I mean, obviously it's healing our broken parts that make us able to be a healing energy for other people. And it's a level of humility because you've been beaten down so deliberately for so long that allows you to be with other people who are undergoing challenges or who disagree with you and to kind of navigate those social environments with a degree of grace.

50:03But how do you further define that? Yeah, that's a great question. And I'm not sure I have the answer. But I do know this, is that my ego death was much easier on me than it was for the people that love me. for the people that love me for melissa for my children for um my dad uh um the uh my friends people that really knew me is that that they have a righteous anger about it you know and it's very it's very trite for me to say you know or maybe it's not trite but but it's uh for me on my lofty perch to say like i forgive let's move on it was a gift to me well it wasn't a gift for my wife who had people show up at our door when she was seven months pregnant with uh with red hats on um and chase her down mulholland drive and drive her off the road you know it wasn't a gift for her when um you know they surrounded when we moved to to venice to get away from that um when they literally sat out in the in the canal with uh bullhorns and enchanted anti-semitic uh stuff and uh because she's jewish and and uh and so there was a lot of violence in their speech and and and real actual threats of violence um that happened so i and again and like you know i get to be this paragon of like of recovery and like oh it was a gift to me and all my secrets are exposed.

51:40Well, what about all the people that were in those pictures that didn't ask for any of this, that had to, you know, have to answer questions to, you know, their family and their friends and, and their lives, you know, the innocent bystanders. Um, and what about my mom? What about my sister? You know, what about my, you know, my aunts and uncles and, and, and, and their righteous anger that the person that they know was, was, this was happening to. And I have to admit, I feel guilty about that sometimes. I feel guilty that sometimes I'm not aware enough of the damage that was done to them. Just think about it from this perspective.

52:28My three older daughters, who are all professionals and adults in their lives now, you know how hard it is. Who's your dad? right well seven months ago when you answered that question what do you do because i know that they love me more than anything in the world but think of how it feels you know for them to think that everywhere that they have to go they have to to be in some kind of a defensive mode that they're either going to fight on my behalf or they're going to flee that every relationship every new job every um new person that they meet at their university or thing is going to be the first thing is going to be what you know yeah they can never that's never outrun it i get to be here and talk to rich roll and i get to have this like incredible conversation about growth and spirituality and what i've discovered in the worst moment of my life was the greatest gift and isn't that a beautiful thing what about them they're watching this podcast with you know a lot of fuck you energy yeah not towards me anymore and and and But 100%, the fuck you energy is directed at the people that did this.

53:44Because there are people that did this. Let's also remember, I take full responsibility for my addiction. I take full responsibility for the fact that I put a lot of it on camera. I take full responsibility for a whole lot of that stuff. But what I don't take responsibility is for the complete and total invasion of my privacy and the corruption of the narrative of what it actually said. And so do I have a target in that in terms of who? Yeah, I mean, for me, because I know for certain that it is all the product of the depravity of Donald Trump himself. But again, to your original question about this is, you know, around resentment.

54:32is, yeah, I've gotten to a great place. Like, wow, me, I'm, you know what I mean? And I really have. I've gotten to a great place where I can write that about relapse. What about the people that I love? But there's a lot of casualties out there with the people that you care about. And for you, overcoming your resentments is life or death. But normal people are more than welcome to nourish their resentments without cataclysmic life consequences as a result of that. And so that's the gift of the program and the tools. And not everybody has those tools as much as I think everybody would be a better person if they went through the steps.

55:26most people don't have to and and so they have to live with certain uh difficult emotions without the capacity to process them in the way that you have but i would imagine like listen you haven't transcended the mortal coil like there's got to be shit that you grind on still oh of course damn one of the things i grind on is is is um is donald trump you know and i'm and and i and i'd say without any apology whatsoever, you know, unapologetically, is that there are people that are deserving of my derision, but I think of all of our derision. I think that there are people that are, you know. There is a sickness that has descended upon the land to steal another piece of prose.

56:25And it's real. In my estimation, it's real. It's not derangement syndrome. It's not anything. There's this license to cruelty that exists. and encouragement and permissiveness yeah i had a really fascinating conversation with an undocumented um person yesterday that has been here for 38 years they came when they were two years old and they went through the whole process uh you know of daca and everything excuse me 28 years at daca and um and then it ended when they were right at the end of it and trump came in And they have had three family members that they can't find now that have been put into detention.

57:13And the point that I made to them is their question was why this doesn't make any sense. None of them are criminals. They've all been here for decades. Yes, they came here on no account of their own, quote unquote, criminality of crossing the border. and they paid taxes from the moment they got jobs when they were 15, 16 years old, is why are they targeting them? And the answer is this, cruelty. Cruelty is the point with them. It's the first time, and I think since, and at least that behavior has been modeled by a president since Andrew Johnson and after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, is cruelty is the point.

58:03And by the way, that was my whole story as it relates to that, of this exposure, of this humiliation, of this dehumanizing. That was the whole point. It was never about me. They thought that they were going to, if they could kill me, in whatever sense of the word, literal or figuratively, they would... And my dad. And he was the person that they feared the most just by polling in terms of that. And they were right. They did miscalculate, though, in that Trump thought he could go after you for being this addict. And I think he misunderstood how that was going to be received. I think that that really did not go well for him.

58:54Because everybody has a relationship with somebody who is suffering in this regard. And best case scenario, that fell flat. And I think in many ways it worked against him. And I see now, there is a tide that's shifting. Like I am hopeful, when all of these sort of hardcore MAGA people are breaking ranks, like it's fracturing. And I think people are waking up to the realization that this is not the way. And I am also very inspired by Gen Z. I think Gen Z is the kindest generation that I've had the good fortune of being connected with. And I think that they are carrying a certain hopefulness as well that has no time for what we're seeing at the kind of highest levels at the moment.

59:52They just have no time for the bullshit. They can, to them, at least in my experience, when I went out with Andrew Callahan, he did this tour, which was awesome. It was Channel 5 Carnival. And part of the Channel 5 Carnival for a 56-year-old guy and people that know me watched clips of it, and they were like, what were you doing? Well, part of the carnival was that he has a, you know it's an audience of about 2 000 people in these stadiums and he invited me to go out with him and last three of them it was one of the most it was one of the best things that i've ever done for myself it's mainly you know like i say draft age 18 to like 35 year old and um all the people that people sitting behind microphones in you know wherever call like you know the lazy in their basements, terminally online, out of touch, Gen Z, whatever.

1:00:54And what I found was an incredible community. I found people that didn't have any – it wasn't about partisanship. It wasn't about Republicans or Democrats. But they cared. They cared deeply. But more than anything, they cared deeply for each other. And the evidence of that was this. They did a talent show. and these people would come up and do these silly tricks but people that you would look at you would that you knew were that in any other setting were kind of scared of their shadow at least that's what you would have thought about them and they do these silly funny sometimes serious things and the whole energy of the of that community was love like no matter what it is or how silly it was.

1:01:45You got cheered and high-fived and everybody. And it was one of the coolest eye-opening things that I've ever, you know, I went with these guys that, you know, Dead City, the punk band? There's like legendary punk band. They did all those. I mean, they're true anarchists. Each one of them is a, like, I love them. They're my buddies. You know why? Because they're all in recovery and they talk about it openly. And, you know, now do they, you know, do they literally like, you know, I mean, they are true anarchists. Like I say dead city for life, like these guys, but there's part of this community.

1:02:27They're part and they're and they're incredibly well read and they understand what's going on. And it's the opposite reaction of the people that listen to Nick Frentis is that instead of disconnecting, instead of thinking everything's a joke, they know that it's not. They understand all the jokes, but they know that they have a voice. And I don't know if you feel like this is all the things I learned in recovery. Like, you know what? What we haven't dealt with yet was the trauma of COVID. I mean, over a million people died. And we act as if this entire generation that didn't get to go to the graduations or weddings or grandmother dying, but particularly the ones that missed like the three years of interaction with their friends when the most important time in your life to have that.

1:03:25Yeah, an entire generation deprived of experiences we take for granted. And we dismiss the impact of that period of time on literally millions of young people. And then you know what we did to them? we allowed for these tech oligarchs and their social media platforms to literally prey on them to make them at best unhealthy at worst dead it's sick it's sick and so i don't even remember the question i don't either but yeah but i think to your point you were talking about um this kind of celebration of cruelty. Yeah. I think that's working in lockstep with this celebration of these tech oligarchs.

1:04:12Like these guys are like rock stars, you know, they go on friendly platforms and spin their yarns and everybody kind of like, you know, bows at the altar of these people as if they're some kind of demigods. I mean, they are like, you know, this is our pantheon in our secular world right now. And, you know, like these people don't have our best interest at heart. They're all about just accumulating power and wealth. And we're meanwhile worshiping them for that as we see this moral decay around us. It is the Odyssey. Did you see the Odyssey? I did, of course. I had Ryan Holiday on and we were talking about the fact that this is a movie about the 12 steps.

1:04:58Like he is going through the ringer and, you know, he has to get to this point of surrender to make it home. It's like, you know, he's, I mean, there's, it's just like the parallels are like all over the place, but obviously also a parable of like what's happening right now. And in, in modern society where we don't have a unifying like anchor to bring us together, what we celebrate is self-interest. and you know when cruelty is something that you know we're seeing at the top of the pyramid it's giving everyone else this permission or this encouragement to act accordingly and you know elon musk said it himself like you know empathy is weakness we need to purge our society of empathy and like this is just anathema to recovery i mean they are cartoon villains like what is going to heal us.

1:05:52And when I see you go on all these podcasts and sit with all these controversial people and all of that, you are practicing empathy, sometimes with people who are deeply unempathetic, simply for the purpose of modeling it. Because all of the callousness and the cruelty is really a function of fear. You said it earlier, all of the crave and bad behavior is about fear. And you can say, well, I'm mad at this point. Whatever the reason is, you just keep peeling the layers of the onion and ultimately it always comes down to fear like that is that is the emotion that animates all of this at the same time so these are people who are masquerading as you know alpha strong men but they are the most like fearful people broken in society yeah they're They're broken and they're inflicting their unhealed trauma on the rest of us and costuming it as masculinity or something like that.

1:06:56And each one of them. And I don't know any of them personally. But I watch – I've had a little experience with Elon because he really, really attacked me during the time because of Twitter. And that gave a whole new life and energy to the whole Hunter Biden question of suppression of blah, blah, blah.

1:07:22And I was really angry. What the fuck? And he's a really broken person. He has had 100 % incredible amount of trauma in his life. And I don't say this to be revealing of anything that's not already out there. His father is a really, really awful human being. And people can go look for themselves, but I think it's very unlikely that his father did not treat him like the way that he treated every other child in his life, his father. And you can see it. All of these, that's why I love Ryan Holiday, is that I have his book, The Daily Stoic, and I use it. And I'm a huge believer in the lessons that we can learn, not only from Aurelius, but from all of those myths and the hero's journey.

1:08:23And in those incredible pieces of wisdom that exist out there, whether it's Aldous Huxley or whether it's Jung or whether it's the Bhagavad Gita, you know what's always the same? is those characters, the evil, they're the archetype of the broken person, the sociopath, the psycho, whatever label that you want to put on them, the malignant narcissist, each one of the carriers, the Agamemnon's. And they repeat themselves. And that's why I say nothing is new under the sun. we are all on our uh on a personal level on our own hero's journey but we we are collectively uh you know now we may live in what i think at a moment of which is an inflection point um and we may be living through the most significant step in our evolution because of AI and I know that you've had some people on here that know way more about it than me.

1:09:40But I think that at a moment in time in which compassion, understanding and empathy will be the central question of whether we make it through or not is that like, maybe I'm just a drop in the bucket, but, but, you know, what, what, what other choice do we have yeah i don't know but like they are uh did you ever see what's his name sam altman he did give an interview about i think it was two or three years ago he said what he was asked what piece of fiction do you um uh you know what in fiction science fiction most represents what you think the world could look like um with the introduction of AGI and super intelligence.

1:10:33And he said, without hesitation, he said Pantheon. Have you seen Pantheon? I haven't. It's cartoon, but the voices are like William Hurt. They're like serious actors. And it's a series that's on, I think it's still on Netflix. Go watch it. The theme being. The theme being that we're all screwed. I thought you were going to say like Terminator. No, no, but this is worse. This is worse. And yet we barrel forward. And yet we barrel forward. This is the tragedy of the human species. Like we are nothing if not builders who are insistent on just continuing to move forward and innovate irrespective of the downstream consequences.

1:11:19Like we'll deal with that when it happens. And history, you know, is pretty clear that like there's always unforeseen consequences. And the fact that the people that are innovating, doing the innovating already have that insight and it has no impact on, you know, how they're on the pace of this advancement is deeply disconcerting. you know that's why i always go back to again i don't know it's apocryphal and or did she really actually said it but the mother theresa's line and if you want to change the world go home and love your family is um and i think that your family doesn't have to just mean your blood relatives but that that family that is the community that you're part of And I get to lay claim to a family that is 50 million wide and strong, as do you, people that I know that we have experienced, that we share one thing, the experience and pain of addiction and the trauma of itself.

1:12:24And it's to varying different degrees, but I know there's a half a dozen rooms within stone's throw of me right here where I can, if I need to, go sit and be witness to their pain and not feel alone. And there's an amazing, amazing selfish thing about that. Again, like the single thing, one part of wisdom, which I've learned from you. I literally, I mean, I've learned from listening to you. Like I'm sitting here talking as if I know anything. And the fact of the matter is, is that you've done more in service to this than anyone else out there talking about it. And I've learned more from you than I think that I could ever impart if I have another 50 years.

1:13:09And that is that we are not alone. And that all of the things that I just said are things that you've spent an entire career trying to educate people about. At the same time, everything that I've shared, these are not my original thoughts either. These are all things that I've learned through experience and in the rooms that I'm just parroting. The cool part of this about it is if you aren't familiar with addiction to everybody outside, you sound really fucking smart. Which is really my, this is my secret agenda. I just want everyone. Meanwhile, you learned it from a toothless guy that was sitting in the corner of a meeting who, you know, is the old timer that's been there 16 years.

1:13:59And, you know, he doesn't have a job and hasn't taken a shower in two weeks. Yeah. And he is like, you go, oh my. This is the wisest person I've ever met in my life. And it is. Because these prophets walk among us. Yeah. I want to talk about the trauma piece a little bit. You mentioned Gabor Mate earlier. Yeah. It must have been, it was probably like eight or nine years ago. Yeah. When I read In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts and I was like, I got to meet this guy. And I flew to Vancouver to do a podcast with him. And he did exactly what I wanted him to do, which is flip the table on me and then dissect my story.

1:14:40And it was a real epiphany for me because I grew up, you know, like I had a, like, there's nothing I could point to in my childhood. Like, I didn't have a car accident where people, you know, like my parents didn't, like, they were always there. There's no reason for me to think, like, I have anything to complain about. I had my insecurities and my feeling like I didn't belong in my own skin and all that stuff that you hear in the rooms with addicts and alcoholics. But my alcoholism, be it a genetic disposition, it just is what it is. Like I had never delved beneath the surface of that because that really isn't part of what the program is about.

1:15:20and Gabor like really pulled the covers for me. And I was resistant to what he had to say in that moment, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. And so I've been on this journey of trying to unpack my past and make peace with certain things and reckon with it honestly, but it's nothing like what you've had to contend with. And this is outside of the 12-step paradigm, right? So where are you in your reckoning or you're healing with the things that happened in your early childhood that have repercussions in terms of your behavior in adulthood? It's still a work in progress, but I'm working, and earnestly.

1:16:06And what does that look like? What does that look like for me? For me, it has a lot to do with writing. is that I spend a lot of time because it's a way for me to be in thought without it being dangerous. You know, I find that when I just find myself kind of, you know, engaged in this delusional thinking, meaning like that I understand the future or am beholden to the past. You know, those kinds of thoughts. Like, oh my God, like what about this and what's going to happen then and things like that. when I want to reflect on something, the way that I find I'm able to do it in a healthy way is through writing.

1:17:05And I would love to hear your take on it. But, you know, like I have that one traumatic event, but beyond that traumatic event, I was surrounded by love. I mean, surrounded by love. I have the best example of a father I can ever wish on anyone. If I am half the father my dad has been to me, my sister, my brother, then I will have been a success in this world. And I really truly mean that. Is that he's incredible. And what was it? And I'm still unpacking it. You know, I think part of it

1:17:45and this is even hard is the accumulation of selfish decisions even as a child that created shame in my life you know i have this one memory that sticks with me and i've never actually told anybody this

1:18:10exclusive and i don't want to overblow it but i literally think about it all the time i got a dog his name was mo it was a black lab it's all i wanted it was a puppy

1:18:24and uh and mo lived for 16 years the greatest dog ever and i was uh 16 when i got mo and um and i i don't want to overblow this because it wasn't i remember trying to train mo my dog and getting so angry that i kicked the dog like where she whimpered and and um and hid from me for like a period of time

1:19:00that has stuck with me this shame i don't know why i'm even telling you this right now other than the fact like the things and so i guess what i'm trying to say is that your traumas don't have to be things that were um inflicted upon you trauma sometimes are things that you did yourself like who is that who is that person that was capable of kicking that dog like I think about it all the time. And the way that I think about it is this, can I really be a good person? Am I, or am I that person? The fact that it stays with you and that you think about it frequently, it basically says you're not pathological because somebody who is wouldn't reflect on that.

1:19:55And I think, you know, it's an example of our pain is our pain. It can be a car accident where there's traumatic casualties or it can just be a slight that the person never thought of again and has lived with you for 40 years and influences your behaviors that turn into these looping patterns that send your life in a negative trajectory. It is what it is. So it's not about the severity of the pain. it's simply what you experienced and i think that in your case i think it's and listen i'm not a psychologist like you know like you know please like i'm the furthest thing from a clinician but what i hear is somebody who went through you know had an incredibly traumatic ordeal that even the most put together person would struggle with recovering from.

1:20:56And yes, you were surrounded with love and you grew up in privilege, et cetera. And so that fuels your dismissal of recognizing this thing really was traumatic, even though you were cared for in the aftermath. And it's not just that isolated event. It's also, as I mentioned earlier, like the specter of growing up with such a prominent figure, your father, even if he is and was the most beautiful and loving person possible, that would be a challenge for anyone, especially an anxiety-riddled young kid who had a brother who seemed to be the embodiment of charisma and potential and all these things, the insecurity that I would imagine you were marinating in as a young person.

1:21:50So there's that. And then not for nothing, like the trauma of having to go through the dismantlement, you know, that you suffered, you know, from 2019 to 24 or whenever it was, the new cycle where you were just pilloried like nobody ever has been. Like all of these things are difficult things for a well-grounded person to manage. And the fact that you're alive is remarkable in and of itself. But I think there's real healing that is still available to you by going, like what we learn in the rims, like you don't avoid your pain, you go directly towards it. And I think there's more freedom on the other side of excavating whatever is there yeah well that's my point is that that a lot of it what i do is is you ask me how i'm i'm if i if i'm engaged in that practice and what i find is is that i'm willing to like explore those things without getting lost in them and that's why i brought up the example which it may seem like oh you're so full of shit that's the worst thing that you know but the um because it's not and i'm not saying that the the trauma was to me that but what i do know is that what still exists in me is uh a voice that says you're not worthy of this love like this moment in time right now is it you've said to earn it you gotta earn it you gotta write like a dope piece on Substack or you got to crush some podcast or you have to, you know, paint something that, you know, everybody is going to like freak out about.

1:23:43Like that's the only way that you can feel love and accept it because love is transactional. Yeah. And I think that I'm growing beyond that, but I know I lived in that space for a long time. I know that I lived, for instance, is that I went law school and i excelled and i went to georgetown and then i transferred to yale and i got out and i was scared to death of public speaking so i knew that i didn't want to go into politics but i was my brother and i literally were inseparable and i i knew that he could have that but the real thing i wanted to be was an artist and i wanted to write and that wasn't part of the the the biden blueprint well i would imagine my dad would have been fine i really but you know who wasn't okay with that me because i didn't think that myself you know and by the way not because of anything other than this is because i was scared to death because you know what it takes to be an artist takes courage and i lacked it so there's the fear but it's that disavowal of self that creates the dissonance.

1:24:53Like you're living out of integrity with who you are. Yeah. With unhealed trauma, like shocker. You know? Here comes the crack pipe. Yeah. And it was the answer to everything. And that's the other thing I say to people is why? Because at first it was the answer to everything. And then you chase that answer into your own prison cell. But man, okay, back to fun things. all right the fun things is is that you know despite all of that is um like the other part about living in this space that i'm living in right now it's like it is it can it can be fun part of it is is that and i mean this sincerely i get to meet rich like i get to come and talk to you you know i'm a super fan and the idea that uh that I get to sit here and have a discussion with somebody that I know cares as deeply as I do about some of these things.

1:25:56And that has been, that has given me the opportunity to learn from the people that he has on and elicits from them things that, you know, have really made a difference in my life. It's like, yeah. Yeah. It's cool. I mean, this idea that, you know, sobriety is nothing but martyrdom and suffering and pain. Like, no, it's not that at all. It's actually liberation and there's a lot of joy and tons of laughter and, you know, suddenly life, you get to experience life in the full spectrum, you know, in technicolor, right? For better or for worse. And, you know, I'm sitting here going, I can't believe this fucking guy, Hunter Biden, is sitting here crazy.

1:26:38He actually came to the studio and he's doing this. Like, how is this my life? How did this happen? And I can't make sense of it other than to say, well, it's all because of recovery. It all stems back to that. It is not logical or rational. It wasn't my plan to be doing this. It's about every single day trying to bring my thoughts and my words into greater integrity with my actions. And incrementally over fucking 30 years, it's slow variety. somehow I've arrived at this point where you know I have like the best job in the world and I get to like invite cool people that I'm just curious about and hold them hostage and force them to talk to me and then share that with the world and and and this is nourishing and beneficial to other people like it's a commercial enterprise but fundamentally it's a it's a yeah I mean but it's It's in the spirit of service.

1:27:37And I also get to like support my family doing it. It's like a magic trick. So I'll give you the story. What I'm getting at is, sorry to cut you off. Cut it off. Because it doesn't make sense, it allows me to appreciate the mystical and the spiritual in a way that has always been challenging for me because there is no explanation. Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm curious around like your, what is your relationship with spirituality look like? Well, I'll give you this idea of serendipity and the idea of when you're kind of like living in the flow. That's my idea of spirituality. I was raised a Catholic, and I have deep reverence for the faith of my father and my grandmother and the way in which they practice their faith.

1:28:36um at the i i stopped going to to mass a long time ago and um and uh but because for me that my the my spirituality is rooted in um you know the perennial philosophy it's rooted in the idea that we are all um not just um figuratively but literally connected we are all one thing all of the source of consciousness is derived from a single source of which we will never be able to articulate or know. And, you know, I find it kind of funny that this kind of whole idea that we're all living in the matrix and, you know, this kind of, I think from these technologists that say that this is all a simulation.

1:29:28I mean, you go back and read the Upanishads, and it's literally it's the it's more extreme than a simulation it's more complicated they're acting as if their analysis is somehow novel, it's just using the language of the moment in which I believe in the idea that our actions have consequences but they begin with how do we treat each other and but more importantly how we treat ourselves. And everything emanates from that. And so that's my spirituality. I give you the serendipity. So I am working with an organization called Peak Path to Health, their rehab center, but I'm working with them here in L.A.

1:30:26and to set up an aftercare foundation, a foundation centered on the continuity of care for people that can't afford it. Because I don't know about you, one of the realizations that I had is the enormity of the privilege that I had is that while I had to go to nine, ten rehabs and go through I don't know how many outpatient programs and sit through how much therapy, and I did ayahuasca, and I did ibogaine, and I did 5-amino DMT, and I did all of these things because I had access and the capacity and capability because I could. Well, 99 % of the people that suffer from what we suffer from don't.

1:31:16And even if they're the capacity insurance or they go on scholarship like we offer, they afterwards go back into the same exact environment. And there's like, you know, it's not called recidivism, but it's a, you know, 85%. The industry says like 75%, you know, relapse rate. I think it's more like 90%. And part of the reason is because the giant chasm, the gap in recovery, I think, is in the continuity of care afterwards. You can go to a treatment center for 28 days, but it spits you out the other side. And if you don't have some kind of support system and structure and accountability, you're spinning in the wind.

1:32:03And so, you know what? Now I get to try to build that. Yeah. And I think it's the most amazing thing in the world. And it's something that I feel like I know a lot about. It's something that I don't know everything about. and i get to go and find people to help me do it and you have these connections and a thing and again it's like you know these selfish acts of service that are that you know you realize that they they just propagate more and more opportunity and more and more um kind of wonderment of like what's next and you know as long as you stay disconnected from uh outcomes which is And expectations.

1:32:47Exactly. What is, you know, like what you said, my spirituality. Like it's, you know, it's Krishna to Arjuna and Bhagavad Gita. That's what it is all about. You know, it doesn't have anything to do with anything other than you detaching from the outcome. Do your service, your service to yourself, your service to your family, your service to your community. Do your service well and detach from the outcome. And that is what it's about. Maybe we can land this plane with some thoughts for the person who is out there who's still suffering. Yeah. Again, I know my own experience is that the thing that made it feel impossible to me was the idea that I was completely alone in my suffering.

1:33:37and not only are you not alone but you are surrounded by people that if you just have a moment of clarity and and pick up a phone reach out for help call someone uh is that that the miracle of what i'm experienced at least for today is available to you and it really is secrets uh grow in the darkness shame can't survive the light and that's the other thing i made it through people yeah and if this fucking guy yeah i promise you i always say to people is this is that here's one of the things that i'm grateful for i benefit more than anybody that i know in my lifetime at least from very low expectations if i show up to your dinner party and i'm not whacked out on crack and you know i mean like oh my god he was amazing actually like you know yeah he could like say words yeah exactly exactly um hunter this was amazing uh what a treat uh i appreciate you taking the time and uh i really am a champion of this campaign you are on right now, where you are broadening understanding around addiction and modeling a new way of trying to communicate with people that we maybe are challenging our world views.

1:35:09And I think that's the way forward, not just politically, but as a culture. If we want to survive as a healthy society, as a liberal democracy, we have to overcome this acrimony. And I think the compassion and the understanding and just the ability to sit with somebody and listen and take them seriously and engage with their ideas is laudable. And I commend you for that. I really, really appreciate it. I like this, man. It means it more to me than you can possibly imagine. Cool. Thank you. Well, let's do this again, man. This was fun. Absolutely. Cool. I'm in the neighborhood. All right, peace.