Hunter Biden says smoking psychedelic toad venom kept him sober for a year as he experimented to kick crack addiction
HUNTER Biden claims smoking psychedelic toad venom kept him sober for more than a year as he experimented with different remedies to overcome his decades-long addiction to alcohol and drugs.
In his new memoir, the 51-year-old describes how he tried everything to ween himself off booze and crack - from yoga to anesthetic ketamine - before turning to the secretions of the Sonoran Desert Toad.
In a desperate attempt to get his life back on track, and with his marriage quickly unravelling, Hunter recounts how he traveled to a clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, in 2014 to try out drug treatments that were not legal in the US.
First, Hunter said he was given ibogaine, a psychedelic derived from plants which he projected a flickering "slideshow" of his life before him.
"The ibogaine therapy was dark," Hunter writes. "After I ingested it alone in a quiet room inside the Tijuana clinic, a slideshow of my life had flickered before my eyes, one image-burst after another."
Hunter said he couldn't recall what all of the visions were, though he said he does remember having "no control over them - I couldn't stop them."
"I also felt paralyzed, unable to move my arms, my legs, anything," he continued. "It scared the hell out of me; I was worried I'd never move again."
The Top Five Most Shocking Revelations in Hunter's Book:
- Began an affair with his brother’s wife after he wanted ‘to help her kids'
- Was 8 when he first tried booze at his dad’s Senate party
- Learned how to cook crack in Chateau Marmont bungalow hanging out with strippers & junkies after divorce
- Doesn't remember meeting the ex-stripper who gave birth to his child
- Convinced "reluctant" dad Joe Biden to support his relationship with Hallie
From there, Hunter said he suffered what's known as a "gray day", a period as feeling though you've just been in a deep depression.
He says he was then taken to a beach house in the nearby Rosarito, where he underwent 5-MeO-DMT therapy using toad secretions that are made into a paste and then smoked.
Supporters of the experimental therapy claim it can ease depression, heal the scars of trauma, and help cure addiction.
In total the experience that followed lasted only 30 minutes, but Hunter said it felt more like "three hours, or three days, or three years."
"It was a profound experience. It connected me in a vividly renewed way to everyone in my life, living or dead.
"Any division between me my Dad, my mommy, Caspy [late sister Naomi], or Beau vanished, or at least became irrelevant.
"I felt as though I was seeing all of existence at once - as one."
People who have used the drug previously, including the likes of Mike Tyson, has described its effects as that of a religious experience or feeling reborn.
But researchers say it can also trigger extreme emotional reactions and vomiting.
The drug is classified as a Schedule 1 controlled substance and carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for possession.
But Biden swears by its effectiveness, insisting it kept him completely sober for a year afterward.
“I know it sounds loopy,” he writes. “Yet whatever else it did or didn’t do, the experience unlocked feelings and hurts I’d buried deep for too long. It served as a salve. I stayed sober for a year afterward.”
After his brother Beau died of brain cancer the following year, Hunter said he fell back of the wagon.
Several years of "non-stop debauchery" would follow as Hunter attempted to get sober, before ultimately backsliding back into addiction in a destructive cycle.
In his book, titled Beautiful Things, Hunter recounts his infamous affair with Beau's widow, Halle Biden, and how his wife Kathleen discovered the fling by reading texts on his iPad.
After divorcing from Kathleen in 2017, Biden's life spiraled out of control once again. Soon after he split from Hallie and wound up smoking crack cocaine daily.
"I’ve bought crack cocaine on the streets of Washington, DC, and cooked up my own inside a hotel bungalow in Los Angeles,” Hunter writes.
“I’ve been so desperate for a drink that I couldn’t make the one-block walk between a liquor store and my apartment without uncapping the bottle to take a swig.
“In the last five years alone, my two-decades-long marriage has dissolved, guns have been put in my face, and at one point I dropped clean off the grid, living in $59-a-night Super 8 motels off I-95 while scaring my family even more than myself."
Hunter also said he would go on 16-hour drug and alcohol binges, even when his father was Vice President.
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He credits his dad for saving his life, recounting one tearful moment after a failed family intervention.
“He grabbed me, swung me around and hugged me. He held me tight in the dark and cried for the longest time,” he wrote of his father.
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“He never let me forget that all was not lost. He never abandoned me, never shunned me, never judged me, no matter how bad things got."
Hunter Biden's memoir, Beautiful Things, hit shelves on Tuesday.