He and his brother Beau were in the 1972 car accident that killed his baby sister and mother. Biden doesn't think he ever fully came to terms with the violence of it.

I don't see that tragic moment as necessarily resulting in behaviors that lent themselves to addiction. But I do have a better understanding of why I feel the way I do sometimes.

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— HUNTER BIDEN RECOUNTS A HORRFIC CAR ACCIDENT

He took his first drink – a glass of champagne the night his father was reelected to the Senate in 1978 – when he was 8 years old. He drank more when he was 14, even though he knew he shouldn't be doing it.

In the spring of 2018, he used his "superpower – finding crack anytime, anywhere" – in Los Angeles. At one point, a dealer pointed a gun at his head before he realized Biden was looking for drugs.

He later learned how to cook drugs and spent a lot of time with thieves, addicts and con artists. "I never slept. There was no clock. Day bled into night and night into day," he writes.

I don't know what else to do, I'm so scared. Tell me what to do.

— JOE BIDEN TO HIS SON HUNTER

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After Beau's death, everything Biden did "for the next four years, resulted in me stumbling, then sliding, then racing downhill." As his marriage to Kathleen fell apart, he returned to rehab and tried to stay on the straight and narrow.

Hallie, Beau's widow, and Hunter connected – romantically – in the wake of Beau's death, between their grief and Biden's addiction. His then-wife Kathleen discovered texts between them on an old iPad.

"That gave her the gift of justification: I was the sicko sleeping with my brother's wife," he writes.

It was a giant miscalculation on both our parts, errors in judgment born of a uniquely tragic time

— HUNTER BIDEN ON HIS Affair with his late brothers wife

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Beau's mantra to his brother during his illness was "beautiful things." He wanted them to "dedicate our lives to appreciating and cultivating the world's boundless beauty" – referencing relationships, places and moments.

It was our code for a renewed outlook on life.

— hunter biden on the meaning of his memoir title

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