Jill Biden Recalls Getting Emotional Talking About Hunter's Addiction While Recording Audiobook of Memoir: 'I Couldn't Say It'
Jill Biden said she became overwhelmed with emotion when saying the words from her memoir about Hunter in her audiobook.
Sept. 2 2026, Published 7:15 p.m. ET
Jill Biden has revealed that one of the most gut-wrenching parts of recording the audiobook for her memoir was confronting stepson Hunter Biden's years-long battle with hardcore drug addiction, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
The 75-year-old former first lady, who released View From the East in June, told Jesse Tyler Ferguson during a Tuesday, September 1, appearance on his Dinner's on Me podcast that she had never even said out loud that her son was a "drug addict" until she was forced to utter the painful words while recording the audiobook.
'I Kept Trying to Say It'
Jill Biden claimed she never said the words 'drug addict' about stepson Hunter before recording her audiobook.
Ferguson asked Jill if there was "weight when you're writing that putting it down on paper for posterity" about the more challenging times in her life.
"When I was writing my book and writing about Hunter's addiction, it was hard. But it wasn't until I got to the audiobook that, you know, I was reading it, and I got to the point where there's the sentence, you know, 'My son was a drug addict,' and I had never said that out loud," the former educator shared.
"And I couldn't say it. I mean, I kept trying to say it."
Watching Hunter Biden's Addiction 'Was Painful to Go Through'
Jill Biden raised Hunter like a son after marrying widowed Joe Biden in 1977.
Jill revealed how writing the book and then having to say the words aloud that Hunter was a severe addict for so many years made her realize she missed an opportunity to make addiction and recovery more of a platform when her husband, Joe Biden, was president from 2021 through 2025.
"I mean, it was really, really hard. And I realized, having been on this book tour, and I realized it a little bit before, but it was too painful, that I should have spoken out a little bit more as First Lady about addiction. But it was so painful to go through it. I mean, to live through it all those years," Jill shared about watching Hunter's three decades of drug and alcohol abuse.
Jill Biden Was 'Surprised by the Emotion' that 'Bubbled Up' During Audiobook Recording
Jill Biden revealed in May that she kept a box of Kleenex close at hand while recording her memoir's audiobook.
Jill hinted that she was going through painful times while recording her audiobook in a May 24 Instagram video, describing her routine over the "many, many days" she spent in a studio reading her memoir aloud from an iPad.
In addition to water, hot tea with honey for her voice, and reading glasses, one thing the former White House resident kept with her at all times was "Kleenexes...because honestly, even though I've written this book, when I get to some of the sad parts, it surprises you that the emotion sort of bubbles up in you."
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Hunter Biden Has Been Candid About Crippling Struggle With Addiction
Hunter Biden claims he's been clean since 2019 after decades of struggling with addiction.
Hunter claims to have been sober since 2019, two years before his father became the nation's 46th president.
The former first son was candid about the darkest depths of his crippling alcohol and crack cocaine addiction in his 2021 memoir, Beautiful Things, and a series of revealing sit-downs while promoting it.
Hunter admitted in a CBS This Morning interview that "Most people who've gone through what I've gone through are either dead or in jail."
While he had addiction issues stemming from the trauma of losing his mom, Neilia Biden, and baby sister in a car crash when he was 2 years old, it was the 2015 death of Hunter's brother, Beau Biden, from brain cancer that he really began to spiral.
"Drinking a quart of vodka a day by yourself in a room is absolutely, completely debilitating," Hunter told journalist Anthony Mason, adding that he was "smoking crack around the clock" and "drinking insanely lethal amounts of alcohol."
Hunter credited meeting and marrying documentary filmmaker Melissa Cohen with helping him finally get clean.
