OPINION: By Zoe Adams, SLATE.COM – Nick Reiner, the man arrested on Sunday for the alleged murder of his parents, beloved Hollywood director Rob Reiner and photographer Michele Singer Reiner, has been to rehab more than eighteen times since the age of 15.
Since Reiner’s arrest, there have been countless headlines, everywhere from gossip magazines to the New York Times, describing his decadeslong struggle with addiction to substances including heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine.
A question at the root of this tragedy is why Reiner, despite his family’s resources, his access to the best addiction care, and his myriad rehab stays, was unable to receive mental health treatment that worked.
“In 2024, 2.6 million people received addiction treatment in a rehab facility.”
Reiner often preferred to be homeless rather than adhere to the strict rules most rehab facilities mandate. He also felt that residential treatment—the recommended course of action for severe addiction, according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine—was ineffective for him.
As a physician who practices addiction medicine and treats patients like Reiner every day, I was not surprised by this.
Many of my patients avoid at all costs rehab or “detox,” a type of inpatient treatment during which patients undergo withdrawal in a monitored environment, feeling that it robs them of their autonomy and is like being in jail or prison. And even when patients do spend the time and money to enter treatment, rehabs fail them.
“There is something gravely wrong with our addiction treatment industry.”
I won’t imply that Reiner’s alleged murder of his parents would have been prevented if only he had received different care. But a high-profile tragedy like this one gives us the opportunity to interrogate what our addiction treatment system may be getting wrong.
In a 2016 podcast episode, Reiner recounted how he had hurled a rock through a window of a rehab facility …
