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Hunter Biden tells Jimmy Kimmel why he wrote a memoir about addiction

Appearing on Thursday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Hunter Biden, the president’s son, told the late night host about writing his memoir, “Beautiful Things,” to help humanize people who face addiction as well as making the book a “love letter” for the people who care about those with addiction.

Video transcript

JIMMY KIMMEL: Listen, we know you. You've had a hard life. There's no question about it. Right from, where from, when you were very young. Tragedy struck your family. And of course, you know, it's easy to draw lines from this to that or whatever, but there definitely is a chemical element to addiction. And--

- Yeah.

- And these things that you went through were horrible. Horrible things that you went through. And, but there were also some-- I thought very interestingly positive things, like you finding a friend, a crack addict on the street, who then moved into your house. And you had this-- I have kind of great relationship with, other than the crack. .

- Yeah. Other than the crack, right? And, but, a-ah, it's say, that relationship I wanted to really detail in the book, because I think that so many addicts are completely dehumanized. You know, Rhea is her name in the book. And you pass this person on the street a 100 times in this neighborhood, um, uh, in so many different cities.

And she was a, um, a crack addict, but you know, she was a mother and a daughter. She was a friend. She didn't, um, and I don't think anybody chooses that life.

And what I really wanted to write the book for was to humanize people suffering from addiction. But also, I wrote the book and more than anything, it's a love letter to the people that, a- are loving someone that's struggling with addiction. Because it's so hard for them to understand, why it is that their love just can't get through. Why it is that if they just love them more, that somehow they would be able to cure them.

And the one thing that I found to be more powerful than the most powerful love I knew, which is the love of my family was my addiction. And I hope that this is, um, provide some people with some real hope, that if they're just persistent, and they continue that, uh, when that person is ready to reach for that love, maybe they'll be able to find their way out of that deep, dark hole.