When Greg heard concerning the deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner, and the alleged involvement of their son Nick, the information struck a painfully acquainted chord.
It wasn’t the violence that resonated, however fairly the heartache and desperation that comes with loving a member of the family who suffers from an sickness that one of the best efforts and intentions alone can’t remedy.
Greg has an grownup little one who, like Nick Reiner, has had an extended and troublesome battle with dependancy.
“It simply rings near house,” mentioned Greg, chair of Households Nameless, a nationwide assist program for family and friends members of individuals with dependancy. (Consistent with the group’s coverage of anonymity for members, The Occasions is withholding Greg’s final title.)
“It’s simply so horrible to be the mum or dad or a liked considered one of any individual that struggles with [addiction], as a result of you’ll be able to’t make any sense of this,” he mentioned. “You may’t discover a method to assist them.”
Each household’s expertise is completely different, and the total image is nearly all the time extra difficult than it seems from the surface. Public particulars concerning the Reiner household’s personal struggles are comparatively few.
However some elements of their story are seemingly recognizable to the hundreds of thousands of U.S. households affected by dependancy.
“That is actually bringing to gentle one thing that’s happening in properties throughout the nation,” mentioned Emily Feinstein, government vice chairman of the nonprofit Partnership to Finish Dependancy.
Over time, Nick Reiner, 32, and his mother and father publicly mentioned his years-long battle with drug use, which included intervals of homelessness and a number of rehab stints.
Most just lately, he was dwelling in a guesthouse on his mother and father’ Brentwood property. Household buddies instructed The Occasions that Michele Singer Reiner had develop into more and more involved about Nick’s psychological well being in current weeks.
The couple have been discovered useless of their house Sunday afternoon. Los Angeles law enforcement officials arrested Nick hours later. On Tuesday, he was charged with their homicide. He’s at present being held with out bail and has been positioned below particular supervision resulting from potential suicide danger, a regulation enforcement official instructed The Occasions.
Consultants in substance use cautioned in opposition to drawing a direct line between dependancy and violence.
“Dependancy or psychological well being points by no means excuse a horrific act of violence like this, and these form of acts are usually not a direct outcome or a trait of dependancy on the whole,” mentioned Zac Jones, government director of Beit T’Shuvah, a nonprofit Los Angeles-based dependancy therapy middle.
The circumstances across the Reiners’ extremely publicized deaths are removed from extraordinary. The truth that dependancy touched their household shouldn’t be.
Almost 1 in 5 individuals within the U.S. has personally skilled dependancy, a 2023 ballot from the Kaiser Household Basis discovered.
Two-thirds of Individuals have a member of the family with the illness, a proportion that’s comparable throughout rural, city and suburban dwellers, and throughout Black, Latino and white respondents.
“Substance use problems, dependancy, don’t discriminate,” Jones mentioned. “It impacts everybody from the best of the excessive [socioeconomic status] to individuals which might be experiencing homelessness on Skid Row. … There isn’t any answer that may be purchased.”
Throughout interviews for the 2015 movie “Turning into Charlie,” a semi-autobiographical movie directed by Rob Reiner and co-written by Nick Reiner, the household instructed journalists that Nick, then in his early 20s, had been to rehab an estimated 18 instances since his early teenagers. Nick Reiner has additionally spoken publicly about his use of heroin as a young person.
Such cycles of rehab and relapse are widespread, consultants mentioned. One 2019 research discovered that it took a mean of 5 restoration makes an attempt to successfully cease utilizing and keep sobriety, although the authors famous that many respondents reported 10 or extra makes an attempt.
Many households empty their financial savings in the hunt for a remedy, Feinstein mentioned. Even these with ample assets usually find yourself in a equally despairing cycle.
“Sadly, the system that’s set as much as deal with individuals shouldn’t be addressing the complexity or the depth of the sickness, and most often, it’s very laborious to seek out efficient evidence-based therapy,” Feinstein mentioned. “Regardless of how a lot cash you might have, it doesn’t assure a greater final result.”
Dependancy is a fancy dysfunction with intermingled roots in genetics, biology and environmental triggers.
Repeated drug use, significantly in adolescence and early maturity when the mind remains to be growing, bodily alters the circuitry that governs reward and motivation.
On high of that, co-occurring psychological well being situations, traumas and different components imply that no two circumstances of substance abuse problems are precisely the identical.
There are usually not sufficient high quality rehabilitation packages to start with, consultants mentioned, and even an efficient program that one affected person responds to efficiently might not work in any respect for another person.
“There’s all the time the danger of relapse. That may be laborious to course of,” Greg mentioned.
Households Nameless counsels members to simply accept the “Three Cs” of a liked one’s dependancy, Greg mentioned: you didn’t trigger it, you’ll be able to’t remedy it and you may’t management it.
“Good, loving households, those that care, cope with this downside simply as a lot,” he mentioned. “That is simply so widespread on the market, however individuals don’t actually speak about it. Particularly mother and father, for concern of being judged.”
After the killings, a household pal instructed The Occasions that they’d “by no means recognized a household so devoted to a baby” as Rob and Michele Reiner, and that the couple “did every little thing for Nick. Each therapy program, remedy classes and put apart their lives to avoid wasting Nick’s repeatedly.”
However the painful reality is that devotion alone can not remedy a fancy, persistent illness.
“In the event you may love somebody into sobriety, into restoration, into remission from their psychiatric points, then we’d have so much fewer shoppers right here,” Jones mentioned. “Sadly, love isn’t sufficient. It’s definitely part of the answer, nevertheless it isn’t sufficient.”
In the event you or somebody you understand is experiencing a psychological well being disaster, assist is obtainable. Name 988 to hook up with educated psychological well being counselors or textual content “HOME” to 741741 within the U.S. and Canada to succeed in the Disaster Textual content Line.
Jake Reiner, Nick Reiner, Romy Reiner, Michele Singer Reiner and Rob Reiner attend 4 Sixes Ranch Steakhouse’s pop-up grand opening at Wynn Las Vegas on Sept. 14, 2024.
(Denise Truscello / Getty Photographs for Wynn Las Vegas)
