Who can even begin to imagine the horror experienced by the legendary film director Rob Reiner, 78, and his wife Michele, 70, as their son – last night charged with their murders – allegedly stabbed them both to death.
Did they realise that their beloved Nick, who had been an addict all his life and who had subjected his family to years of violent, erratic behaviour, was a genuine threat to them?
How could they have possibly imagined that he would, in the words of the Los Angeles police, end up being ‘responsible’ for their deaths?
No parent ever wants to give up on their child, no matter how terrible their behaviour or their actions, and the Reiners were evidently no exception. Family and friends have spoken openly about how much they loved their son, and how hard they tried to help him overcome his addictions.
Piecing together what we know, it seems the Reiners were endlessly understanding and unfailingly kind towards him. He had been living in their guesthouse for the past few years, despite having destroyed it more than once in fits of drug-induced rage.
In 2016, Reiner made a film based on a screenplay written by Nick called Being Charlie – the story of a young man’s battles with substance abuse. At the time, he seemed almost to blame himself for his son’s troubles.
He spoke movingly about Nick’s experience of rehab (he had his first stint aged 15).
‘When Nick would tell us that it wasn’t working for him, we wouldn’t listen,’ he said. ‘We were desperate. And because the people [at rehab] had diplomas on their wall, we listened to them when we should have been listening to our son.’
He added: ‘If your kid is going through rough times, [as] the parent, your main job is to keep your child safe. So I would do anything.’
Even if it cost him his own life, it now seems. It’s heartbreaking. It’s also the sad reality of having a loved one who is an addict. Because the truth is that however much you care about them, however much you try to help them or understand what they are going through, however much you extend the hand of friendship or try to heal them with love, you can’t reach them.
They only care about one thing: their drug of choice. Come between them and their next fix and see how they turn on you.
I’ve experienced this myself with friends and the children of friends over the years, and I must confess it has made me completely revise my views about addiction.
I used to think, rather like the Princess of Wales, that addiction was a kind of illness, one that struck randomly, and that addicts were essentially helpless victims who just needed the right help.
I now think that while sometimes that can indeed be the case – if someone has a terrible trauma, for example – far too often it’s not an affliction that can’t be helped: it’s an active choice. A choice that we well-meaning friends and relatives of addicts all too often end up enabling.
As parents, we are particularly susceptible, since we are naturally programmed to want to protect and nurture our children. Indeed, arguably the whole job of a parent is to enable their child. But when it comes to addiction, that’s the very last thing you should be doing.
I’ve seen this time and again. Distraught parents who, like the Reiners, expend endless emotion, time and money trying to help their unhappiest child.
Very often they will have other children whose behaviour is entirely unproblematic, even exemplary – and yet the troubled child gets all the care and attention, leaving their siblings short-changed. As well as being deeply unfair on the other kids, they’re on a hiding to nothing.
The more you mollycoddle an addict, the more they take you for a fool. They might not mean to, but they will: it’s just the nature of the beast.
The equation is simple: the more you give, the more they will take – until eventually they take everything.
And if you decide you’ve had enough, and that it’s time to turn off the tap, they can become extremely unstable – especially if the substances they are abusing are of the kind that can lead to paranoia and psychosis.
Nick Reiner’s principal poison of choice appears to have been meth – a drug that can make its users highly volatile and dangerous. Indeed, a source close to the family has been quoted as saying that their son’s drug use and violent outbursts had been getting consistently worse, and that the couple ‘wanted him out’ of their home.
Perhaps faced with the prospect of losing his charmed existence at the expense of two clearly very loving parents, he just snapped. Perhaps they were killed by their own kindness. If so, what an unbearably sad epitaph.
How far should families go to help addicted loved ones before protecting themselves comes first?
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Angelina is truly perfect
Angelina Jolie, 50, has shared photographs of her mastectomy scars with the readers of Time France magazine.
I must confess, I’m rather moved. In a world where women are judged by impossible beauty standards, it can be hard to expose one’s imperfections. But if it helps others feel better about themselves, it’s worth it.
Good on her.
Zip it, mad men!
Everyone’s lost the plot. Exhibit a) Donald Trump, who effectively suggested that film director Rob Reiner was killed because he didn’t agree with his (Trump’s) politics.
Exhibit b) Labour donor Dale Vince, who responded to the massacre at Bondi Beach by suggesting that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu ‘wants anti-Semitism to be a thing’ because it ‘validates him’.
Exhibit c) the Journal of Medical Ethics publishing an article by woke anthropologists suggesting that the real problem with female genital mutilation is not that little girls’ genitals are being butchered, but the fact that Western women such as myself disapprove of it.
You are all mad. Please go away.
Since when has it become compulsory to respond to complete strangers who want to get in touch via social media? ‘Sarah, I’m still waiting for your response,’ says an email from someone I’ve never met from a place I’ve never even heard of via LinkedIn.
The more I ignore them, the more hysterical they become. I’m very sorry, and really don’t want to seem rude, but you are wasting your time. I only really like dogs.
‘Tis the season to relax
Why does everyone keep asking me if I’m ‘ready for Christmas’? What do they mean? What am I supposed to be ready for?
Is Christmas some kind of emergency? Is it dangerous? Does it require special equipment or waterproof clothing? Must I wear protective goggles?
I’m confused. I thought Christmas was mostly sitting in front of the telly eating too much chocolate – a situation which, last time I checked, I am eminently equipped for…
Should women be given smaller portions in restaurants and cafes to help keep them slim? The Government’s obesity tsar, Professor Naveed Sattar, certainly seems to think so.
Why stop there? Why not just ban women from leaving the house altogether and only allow them to eat what their menfolk deem appropriate. After all, you don’t see many fat women in Afghanistan…
