Colombian Interior Minister Armando Benedetti revealed in an interview on Sunday that he suffers from drug and alcohol addiction, asserting, “I wouldn’t want to be addicted, but I am.”
Benedetti, a former senator, is a highly controversial member of the Colombian government and part of the inner circle of far-left and pro-cocaine President Gustavo Petro — who was recently accused by his former Foreign Minster Álvaro Leyva of also having a drug addiction.
The interior minister spoke with the Colombian magazine Cambio on Sunday and disclosed his long history of substance abuse problems, stating that he has spent 27 of his 57 years of life facing drug and alcohol addiction.
“Sometimes it’s hard for me to accept it. Nobody likes to say they are sick. I don’t want to be a drug addict. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be an addict. And I am. It is a disease,” Benedetti said.
Benedetti explained to Cambio that he went into rehabilitation in 1995 and remained drug-free for 14 years. He said that he had entered rehabilitation in October 2024 following a relapse, asserting that he “is now a better father, husband, and friend.”
“In those 14 years, my life changed too well. I started as a councilman, representative to the House, senator. I got married and had a son,” Benedetti said during the interview. “What I want to tell you… is that when you move away from that — and I am not talking against people who drink — life changes, as has happened to me in the last months: my life has changed for the better from any point of view.”
“From when I go to bed to when I get up. My peace of mind and, most importantly, my relationship with my wife and children,” he emphasized.
Benedetti has occupied several positions in Petro’s administration since the president took office in August 2022 and became Colombia’s first ever leftist president. Benedetti has also been implicated in several corruption, domestic violence, and drug and alcohol addiction scandals.
Prior to taking office as interior minister in February, Benedetti served as Petro’s ambassador to Caracas, Venezuela, and then as ambassador of Colombia to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Benedetti briefly served as Petro’s chief of staff between February and March 2025 — a designation met with fierce criticism by some of Petro’s ministers, most notably from former Environment Minister Susana Muhamad. At the time, Muhamad said, “as a feminist and as a woman, I cannot sit at this table of our progressive project with Armando Benedetti.”
Muhamad resigned from her ministerial position shortly afterward and confirmed to local outlets that her departure from the ministry was in response to Benedetti’s designation as Petro’s chief of staff. Muhamad continued serving as director of the National Planning Department through last week.
In 2023, Benedetti, alongside current Foreign Minister Laura Sarabia, briefly left the Colombian government in the aftermath of an illegal wiretapping and abuse of power scandal known as “Nannygate” that arose after Marelbys Meza, a Colombian woman who worked as Sarabia’s nanny after Benedetti fired her, accused the pair of forcing her to take a polygraph test.
Benedetti said in the Sunday interview that he was left unemployed as a result of Nannygate and that, due to his unemployment and the “trauma of the problem in my personal life,” the only thing he had to do was to “consume [drugs] and play tennis.” Benedetti also acknowledged that he had been unfaithful to his wife, Adelina Guerrero, but that his rehabilitation process has “allowed him to recover his home.”
Last week, former Colombian Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva published a four-page letter addressed to President Gustavo Petro alleging that the chief executive suffers from drug addiction — something Leyva claimed to “confirm” after Petro allegedly went missing for two days during an unspecified official visit to Paris, France.
In the letter, Leyva also accused Benedetti and Foreign Minister Sarabia of having “kidnapped” and taken advantage of Petro — urging Petro to “disassociate” from the pair.
According to Leyva, Petro asked him to talk to Benedetti as “he [Benedetti] did not want to accept the designation” and instead allegedly aspired to work in an “important” position to Colombia, “perhaps as an eventual minister.” Leyva claimed in the letter that he understood from his conversation with Benedetti that he was “addicted to drugs.”
“As if I were aware of his personal problems, he told me that [psychologist] Dr. Miguel Bettin brought him over the other side [of the addiction] I commented on it. I understood from everything he said that he was addicted to drugs. Bettin is a great professional with an enormous reputation,” Leyva said in the letter. “From my interview with Benedetti, I concluded that he was a sick person. He’s still the same, Mr. President.”
President Gustavo Petro, one of the world’s most prominent defenders of legalizing and consuming cocaine, publicly commented on Benedetti’s interview in a lengthy social media post in which he attributed the development of addictions to capitalism and asserted that drug addiction is a psychological disease — but that it should not be confused with drug use, as “they are two different issues.”
“The development of addictions, especially in the richest societies of the planet, has to do with the destruction of community and family ties caused by capitalism,” Petro’s message read. “Capital always leads to the loneliness of cut-off individuals, who only serve as consumers or exploited producers for capital. That is why the center of people’s amusement is more and more the shopping mall and not the forest or the water.”
Petro concluded his message by referring to the “slander against me” after Leyva’s recent accusations. Petro claimed to admit to an “addiction” to “revolutionary spirit.”
“In my life, I have had an addiction. My revolutionary spirit, which always seeks freedom, is contrary to slavery, and addictions are slavery of the spirit,” he wrote.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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