Rob (centre) and Michele (left) tried their best over the years to help Nick overcome his drug addiction, but love and financial resources aren’t enough to tackle this complex problem. — TNS
When Greg heard about the deaths of actor-director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner, and the alleged involvement of their son Nick Reiner, the news struck a painfully familiar chord.
It wasn’t the violence that resonated, but rather, the heartache and desperation that comes with loving a family member who suffers from an illness that the best efforts and intentions alone can’t cure.
Greg has an adult child who, like Nick, has had a long and difficult struggle with addiction.
“It just rings close to home,” said Greg, chair of Families Anonymous, an American support programme for friends and family members of people with addiction.
(In keeping with the organisation’s policy of anonymity for members, Greg’s last name is being withheld.)
“It’s just so horrible to be the parent or a loved one of somebody who struggles with [addiction], because you can’t make any sense of this,” he said.
“You can’t find a way to help them.”
A long struggle
Every family’s experience is different, and the full picture is almost always more complicated than it appears from the outside.
Public details about the Reiner family’s private struggles are relatively few.
But some parts of their story are likely recognisable to the millions of American families affected by addiction.
“This is really bringing to light something that’s going on in homes across the country,” said Emily Feinstein, executive vice president of the US non-profit organisation Partnership to End Addiction.
Over the years, Nick, 32, and his parents publicly discussed his years-long struggle with drug use, which included periods of homelessness and multiple rehab stints.
Most recently, he was living in a guesthouse on his parents’ Brentwood property in California, United States.
Family friends told The Los Angeles Times that Michele had become increasingly concerned about Nick’s mental health in recent weeks.
The couple were found dead in their home on Dec 14.
Los Angeles police officers arrested Nick hours later.
On Dec 16, he was charged with their murder.
He is currently being held without bail and has been placed under special supervision due to potential suicide risk, a law enforcement official told The Los Angeles Times.
Experts in substance use cautioned against drawing a direct line between addiction and violence.
“Addiction or mental health issues never excuse a horrific act of violence like this, and these sort of acts are not a direct result or a trait of addiction in general,” said Zac Jones, executive director of Beit T’Shuvah, a non-profit Los Angeles-based addiction treatment centre.
Affects all demographics
The circumstances around the Reiners’ highly publicised deaths are far from ordinary.
The fact that addiction touched their family is not.
Nearly one in five people in the US has personally experienced addiction, a 2023 poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found.
Two-thirds of Americans have a family member with the disease – a proportion that is similar across rural, urban and suburban dwellers, and across Black, Latino and white respondents.
“Substance use disorders, addiction, do not discriminate,” Jones said.
“It affects everyone from the highest of the high [socioeconomic status] to people that are experiencing homelessness on Skid Row.
“... There is no solution that can be bought.”
During interviews for the 2015 movie Becoming Charlie, a semi-autobiographical film directed by Rob and co-written by Nick, the family told journalists that Nick, then in his early 20s, had been to rehab an estimated 18 times since his early teens.
Nick has also spoken publicly about his use of heroin as a teenager.
Such cycles of rehab and relapse are common, experts said.
One 2019 study found that it took an average of five recovery attempts to effectively stop using and maintain sobriety, though the authors noted that many respondents reported 10 or more attempts.
Many families deplete their savings in search of a cure, Feinstein said.
Even those with abundant resources often end up in a similarly despairing cycle.
“Unfortunately, the system that is set up to treat people is not addressing the complexity or the intensity of the illness, and in most cases, it’s very hard to find effective evidence-based treatment,” she said.
“No matter how much money you have, it doesn’t guarantee a better outcome.”
Love is not enough
Addiction is a complex disorder with intermingled roots in genetics, biology and environmental triggers.
Repeated drug use, particularly in adolescence and early adulthood when the brain is still developing, physically alters the circuitry that governs reward and motivation.
On top of that, co-occurring mental health conditions, traumas and other factors mean that no two cases of substance abuse disorders are exactly the same.
There are not enough quality rehabilitation programmes to begin with, experts said, and even an effective programme that one patient responds to successfully may not work at all for someone else.
“There is always the risk of relapse.
“That can be hard to process,” Greg said.
Families Anonymous counsels members to accept the “Three Cs” of a loved one’s addiction. They are, as Greg said: you didn’t cause it, you can’t cure it, and you can’t control it.
“Good, loving families, people that care, deal with this problem just as much,” he said.
“This is just so common out there, but people don’t really talk about it.
“Especially parents, for fear of being judged.”
After the killings, a family friend told The Los Angeles Times that they had “never known a family so dedicated to a child” as Rob and Michele, and that the couple “did everything for Nick. Every treatment programme, therapy sessions ... they put aside their lives to save Nick’s repeatedly.”
But the painful fact is that devotion alone cannot cure a complex, chronic disease.
“If you could love someone into sobriety, into recovery, into remission from their psychiatric issues, then we’d have a lot fewer clients here,” Jones said.
“Unfortunately, love isn’t enough.
“It’s certainly a part of the solution, but it isn’t enough.” – Los Angeles Times/Tribune News Service
Those suffering from mental health issues or contemplating suicide can reach out to the Mental Health Psychosocial Support Service (03-2935 9935 or 014-322 3392); Talian Kasih (15999 or 019-261 5999 on WhatsApp); Jakim’s Family, Social and Community care centre (011-1959 8214 on WhatsApp); and Befrienders Kuala Lumpur (03-7627 2929 or email sam@befrienders.org.my).
