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- Hunter Biden has opened up about an emotional family intervention during 2020 the presidential campaign.
- He described how his father, now the president, cried and embraced him outside their Delaware home.
- In this CBS interview, Biden's son described how "powerful" his addiction to substances was.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, has opened up about an emotional intervention his family staged during the 2020 presidential campaign.
In an interview with "CBS This Morning" co-host Anthony Mason, the 51-year-old discussed his highly-publicized battle with substance abuse.
He recalled a particularly memorable incident at the family home in Wilmington, Delaware, whilst Joe Biden was in the midst of the presidential campaign.
Biden shared that he had a tense confrontation with his father and stormed out of the house. The future president then chased his son down the driveway, he told Mason.
As he tried to enter his car, his daughters blocked him from entering it. Then, he said, his father hugged him.
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Biden described his father's embrace. "[He] gave a bear hug, and he said - and just cried, and said - 'I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. Please'."
In his first interview since his father took office, the president's second-oldest son told CBS News what he thought of Biden's pleas.
"I thought: 'I need to figure out a way to tell him that I'm gonna do something, so that I can go take another hit.' It's the only thing I could think. Literally," he said. "That's how powerful. I don't know of a force more powerful than my family's love...except addiction."
Hunter Biden said that this scenario was "the hardest part of the book to write," referring to his newly released memoir.
In "Beautiful Things," he shares candid details of his struggle to become sober. At one point in his drug and alcohol spiral, Biden reveals he was smoking crack cocaine every 15 minutes.
He writes about spending a month in a Washington apartment bingeing on vodka while his father was vice president, The New York Times reported.
Biden's son also credits his wife, Melissa Cohen, for helping him reach sobriety, The Times reported.