Hunter Biden’s ex-wife told jurors in his federal gun trial this week that she first found out he was using drugs when she found a crack pipe laying in an ash tray on their porch. His ex-girlfriend and sister-in-law, Hallie Biden, recounted a similar story , telling jurors that she found crack in her home shortly after she began dating Hunter but had no idea what it was. Hallie, like many Americans, wasn’t prepared to confront a family member with a substance abuse problem and was ill-suited to do so, telling jurors she even had to Google what she’d found.
The discovery led to an addiction of her own. About 12.6 percent or 46.
7 million Americans reported that they had a substance abuse problem in 2022, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. It’s no surprise then that at least four of the jurors in Biden’s trial revealed during the selection process that they’d had close friends or relatives suffer from substance abuse. Rachel Karpp, an addiction recovery counselor for Advanced Recovery Systems, who knocked her own painkiller addiction in 2020, said if she were in Hallie’s shoes, she would’ve confronted Hunter immediately.
“I would absolutely confront them face-to-face about it,” Karpp added. “Obviously they’re gonna deny, go into defense mode, maybe not, they may admit it.” However, Karpp qualified that using shame and guilt were harmful.
“You wanna try to avoid shaming the person and making them feel worse than they already are f.
