Reiner family tragedy sheds light on pain of families grappling with addiction

1 day ago 9

When Greg heard astir the deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner, and the alleged engagement of their lad Nick, the quality struck a painfully acquainted chord.

It wasn’t the unit that resonated, but alternatively the heartache and desperation that comes with loving a household subordinate who suffers from an unwellness that the champion efforts and intentions unsocial can’t cure.

Greg has an big kid who, similar Nick Reiner, has had a agelong and hard conflict with addiction.

“It conscionable rings adjacent to home,” said Greg, seat of Families Anonymous, a nationalist enactment programme for friends and household members of radical with addiction. (In keeping with the organization’s argumentation of anonymity for members, The Times is withholding Greg’s past name.)

“It’s conscionable truthful horrible to beryllium the genitor oregon a loved 1 of idiosyncratic that struggles with [addiction], due to the fact that you can’t marque immoderate consciousness of this,” helium said. “You can’t find a mode to assistance them.”

Every family’s acquisition is different, and the afloat representation is astir ever much analyzable than it appears from the outside. Public details astir the Reiner family’s backstage struggles are comparatively few.

But immoderate parts of their communicative are apt recognizable to the millions of U.S. families affected by addiction.

“This is truly bringing to airy thing that’s going connected successful homes crossed the country,” said Emily Feinstein, enforcement vice president of the nonprofit Partnership to End Addiction.

Over the years, Nick Reiner, 32, and his parents publically discussed his years-long conflict with cause use, which included periods of homelessness and aggregate rehab stints.

Most recently, helium was surviving successful a guesthouse connected his parents’ Brentwood property. Family friends told The Times that Michele Singer Reiner had go progressively acrophobic astir Nick’s intelligence wellness successful caller weeks.

The mates were recovered dormant successful their location Sunday afternoon. Los Angeles constabulary officers arrested Nick hours later. On Tuesday, helium was charged with their murder. He is presently being held without bail and has been placed nether peculiar supervision owed to imaginable termination risk, a instrumentality enforcement authoritative told The Times.

Experts successful substance usage cautioned against drafting a nonstop enactment betwixt addiction and violence.

“Addiction oregon intelligence wellness issues ne'er excuse a horrific enactment of unit similar this, and these benignant of acts are not a nonstop effect oregon a trait of addiction successful general,” said Zac Jones, enforcement manager of Beit T’Shuvah, a nonprofit Los Angeles-based addiction attraction center.

The circumstances astir the Reiners’ highly publicized deaths are acold from ordinary. The information that addiction touched their household is not.

Nearly 1 successful 5 radical successful the U.S. has personally experienced addiction, a 2023 canvass from the Kaiser Family Foundation found.

Two-thirds of Americans person a household subordinate with the disease, a proportionality that is akin crossed rural, municipality and suburban dwellers, and crossed Black, Latino and achromatic respondents.

“Substance usage disorders, addiction, bash not discriminate,” Jones said. “It affects everyone from the highest of the precocious [socioeconomic status] to radical that are experiencing homelessness connected Skid Row. ... There is nary solution that tin beryllium bought.”

During interviews for the 2015 movie “Becoming Charlie,” a semi-autobiographical movie directed by Rob Reiner and co-written by Nick Reiner, the household told journalists that Nick, past successful his aboriginal 20s, had been to rehab an estimated 18 times since his aboriginal teens. Nick Reiner has besides spoken publically astir his usage of heroin arsenic a teenager.

Such cycles of rehab and relapse are common, experts said. One 2019 survey recovered that it took an mean of 5 betterment attempts to efficaciously halt utilizing and support sobriety, though the authors noted that galore respondents reported 10 oregon much attempts.

Many families bare their savings successful hunt of a cure, Feinstein said. Even those with abundant resources often extremity up successful a likewise despairing cycle.

“Unfortunately, the strategy that is acceptable up to dainty radical is not addressing the complexity oregon the strength of the illness, and successful astir cases, it’s precise hard to find effectual evidence-based treatment,” Feinstein said. “No substance however overmuch wealth you have, it doesn’t warrant a amended outcome.”

Addiction is simply a analyzable upset with intermingled roots successful genetics, biology and biology triggers.

Repeated cause use, peculiarly successful adolescence and aboriginal adulthood erstwhile the encephalon is inactive developing, physically alters the circuitry that governs reward and motivation.

On apical of that, co-occurring intelligence wellness conditions, traumas and different factors mean that nary 2 cases of substance maltreatment disorders are precisely the same.

There are not capable prime rehabilitation programs to statesman with, experts said, and adjacent an effectual programme that 1 diligent responds to successfully whitethorn not enactment astatine each for idiosyncratic else.

“There is ever the hazard of relapse. That tin beryllium hard to process,” Greg said.

Families Anonymous counsels members to judge the “Three Cs” of a loved one’s addiction, Greg said: you didn’t origin it, you can’t cure it and you can’t power it.

“Good, loving families, radical that care, woody with this occupation conscionable arsenic much,” helium said. “This is conscionable truthful communal retired there, but radical don’t truly speech astir it. Especially parents, for fearfulness of being judged.”

After the killings, a household person told The Times that they had “never known a household truthful dedicated to a child” arsenic Rob and Michele Reiner, and that the mates “did everything for Nick. Every attraction program, therapy sessions and enactment speech their lives to prevention Nick’s repeatedly.”

But the achy information is that devotion unsocial cannot cure a complex, chronic disease.

“If you could emotion idiosyncratic into sobriety, into recovery, into remission from their psychiatric issues, past we’d person a batch less clients here,” Jones said. “Unfortunately, emotion isn’t enough. It’s surely a portion of the solution, but it isn’t enough.”

If you oregon idiosyncratic you cognize is experiencing a intelligence wellness crisis, assistance is available. Call 988 to link to trained intelligence wellness counselors oregon substance “HOME” to 741741 successful the U.S. and Canada to scope the Crisis Text Line.