This analysis explores the complex interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors that may have contributed to Nick Reiner's alleged actions, focusing on his history of substance abuse, potential mental health conditions like schizophrenia, and the psychological impact of growing up in a prominent Hollywood family.
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In 2016, Nick Reiner and Rob Reiner went
on a press tour for a movie they
ostensibly made together. As you've
probably seen, one line from one of
these interviews seems disturbingly preient.
preient.
>> You don't seem very fiery to me. You
seem like crazy. I get crazy. Okay,
>> you don't want to set me off.
>> But there's also a general air of
tension in those interviews that at
least in hindsight seems foreoding.
>> He could go deeper with it. I mean, it
was funny, but I felt the subject
matter, you know, should allow him to go
deeper with it.
>> Yeah. Well, that wasn't said at the
time. It was sort of just like, hey,
this is trash. But anyways, we went we
went along and uh
>> you're like, wow, my dad's Rob Reiner.
>> I never had thought about it. And then,
>> yeah, it didn't cross your mind, right?
Never. And Nick was there for all the
casting uh uh you know, all of the the
auditions. I was sitting there. But
>> yeah, but you had you you always gave
your opinion,
>> but anger or resentment of an adult son
for his famous father is one thing, and
homicidal rage is another. Right. I'm
Andrew Vandervart, a psychiatrist and
neuroscientist. Given that I have never
personally examined Nick Reiner, and he
is not my patient, I cannot give
professional diagnostic opinions.
However, we can discuss some of the
publicly available information and
speculate on the potential forces at
play in cases like this. Any opinions
expressed are my own. So, let's briefly
review the timeline of the murders. On
Saturday, December 13th, Nick Reiner was
brought along to Conan O'Brien's
Christmas party by his parents who were
reportedly worried about leaving him
home alone given his recent erratic
behaviors. At that party, there have
been multiple sources describing Nick's
behavior, although none have been
willing to go on the record. But
allegedly, he was walking up to
attendees, interrupting their
conversations, and kept asking people,
"Are you famous?" This does sound like
an odd question and one that I don't
really imagine someone would just invent
when talking to TMZ or People magazine
because it's both so odd but also so
specific to say he was going up to
everyone asking them if they're famous.
It's a it's a strange thing, right? And
to me it sounds like a sort of inside
joke, but one where Nick Reiner is the
only one in on the joke. Another
reported encounter, again an anonymous
source, is that Nick Reiner interrupted
a conversation the comic actor Bill her
was having, uh, but was then told the
conversation was private and that Nick
then stared, standing very still for an
uncomfortable period of time before
storming off. So standing very still and staring,
staring,
if nothing else, I think is a sign of
very poor social reciprocity. He was not
aware. Similarly to asking people a
nonsequiter about whether they were famous.
famous.
It is a sign of someone that does not
know or does not care how they are
coming off. Again, a bit like the world
to Nick Reiner at that time was only
occupied by one main character and
everyone else was supporting cast. Next,
there was apparently a verbal
altercation between Nick Reiner and Rob
Reiner. Again, anonymous reports, but of
a shouting match triggered by Rob
Reiner's embarrassment at his son's
behavior, described in the New York Post
and elsewhere as a massive blowup with
yelling between the two, such that at
one point, partygoers were discussing
calling the police for a mental health
hold, essentially an emergency
evaluation at a hospital. The fight
account has been disputed, however, with
uh an executive quote unquote at the
Conan party saying he saw no fight. It's
BS. Now, I'm not sure one report of not
seeing a fight means that there wasn't a
fight because it's it's sort of harder
to be sure of the absence of something
than the presence of something. But this
executive says he never saw it. So, it's
unknown when Nick Reiner left the party,
but the Riners were seen on video
leaving the event at 11:47 p.m. on
Sunday. Around 4:00 a.m., Nick Reiner
checked into the Purside Santa Monica
Hotel a few miles from the Reiner House.
A staffer of the hotel reported that
Nick looked quote tweaked out, which is
Californian for very nervous, maybe
disheveled, maybe overstimulated. I
believe Nick left the hotel Sunday
morning without formally checking out.
And then when staff went to clean his
room, they found the shower, quote,
"Full of blood, as well as blood stains
on the bed and the windows of the room
having been covered with bed sheets."
That same day, Rob Reiner and his wife
Michelle were found dead in their
bedroom from multiple stab wounds. Since
then, Nick Reiner has been arrested and
charged with homicide. Legally, he is
innocent until proven guilty, but at
least at this time, there seems to be
more so a discussion about his mental
health and a potential insanity defense.
Now, again, that question is not my role
here. I just want to provide what I
might think about if I were making a
formulation. And look, I don't have
nearly enough data, so this could all be
fog of war. But I do think there are
things pertinent to all of us. Questions
generally about substance use,
personality, and pathology.
So if you're going to make a
formulation, you have to think that
nothing ever has just one cause. And
least of all the human mind, which is
not an event that might be caused by
some preceding circumstance, but is a
process that is constantly in flux. So
there are many ways to break down a
formulation. And the most common being
the biocsychosocial model which says
look at the biological layer. Look at
the psychological layer and the social
layer and pay attention to all of the
cross talk between these layers. How one
influences the other and what the
feedback loops are between these levels.
Another is the perspectives of
psychiatry model by McHugh and Slavny
which examines individuals through four
perspectives put simply as what the
person has. So, illness, disease, brain
pathology, who the person is. So,
personality traits, what the person is
doing, behaviors, maladaptive coping,
substances, and what story the person is
telling. So, what they have encountered,
what has been their life story, how do
they make meaning in life?
So, maybe here we can consider the
unique interactions that might occur
between all of these levels with the
caveat that it's a complicated web.
So on the biological layer and with the
perspective of something the person has,
it has been reported by TMZ and others
now that Nick Reiner had a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
schizophrenia.
What had also been previously well known
to the public, including via the movie
Being Charlie, which was based on Nick
Reiner's life and made by his father
Rob, was that Nick Reiner had a severe
substance use history, including
cannabis, cocaine, heroin, and meth.
really just a poly poly substance use
from the age of 14 onwards. Now if you
look at the DSM5 you'll see
schizophrenia which means essentially
chronic psychosis and you'll see
substanceinduced psychosis which is
psychosis triggered by intoxication or
withdrawal. But there are two issues
here. The first is what do you do when
essentially someone has chronic
substance-induced psychosis? Meaning
there is constant substance use and the
substance is constantly causing psychosis.
psychosis.
By the way, what is psychosis? Well,
it's a break from reality and typically
it looks like a combination of hypers
salience. So things seeming extremely
significant with an example being
paranoia where innocuous things might
seem extremely significant and
threatening um so that everything
becomes fearful and meaningful in a
scary way right
um and then disorganization or
fragmentation. So concepts or even words
not connecting in a way that makes
sense. And I think at least part of that
that breakdown and continuity of thought
may be from a working memory impairment.
There's certainly working memory
impairment in schizophrenia. And there's
also working memory impairment in say
very high doses of THC. So I don't know
if you've ever been extremely high, like
too high, but I hear that people start
saying something and then forget what
they had started saying by the end of
the sentence. Right? that sort of what
were we talking about?
>> Mhm. I was on set with him. We Yeah.
>> No, sorry. Go ahead.
>> I I don't I have no idea what I was
going to say.
>> So, if you imagine being in that sort of
state where you're trying to plow
through not remembering what you were
just talking about and still talking,
you can see how there might be kind of a
a discontinuity of thoughts, a
breakdown, a disorganization of
thoughts. So again, for some people, if
THC is causing a psychosis, like
paranoia and working memory impairment,
but they're also doing it constantly,
doing THC constantly, is that chronic psychosis?
psychosis?
Functionally, yeah. But is it
schizophrenia? Well, technically the
DSM5 would say it's not schizophrenia if
it's being caused by something else, if
it's being caused by a substance.
But what do you actually do in the case
of someone who has chronic
substance-induced psychosis? Obviously,
you try to get them to stop using
substances, but many times they just
don't or won't. So, functionally, what
happens in the very imperfect world of
clinical psychiatry is we essentially
say, okay, well, will you at least try
taking this antiscychotic, too? Granted
that they're going to keep taking
substances, they're they're not
stopping. The idea is, well, this person
can at least get some guard rails such
that despite continued use of
substances, let's let's say they they
keep using meth and getting these floods
of dopamine that make everything hyper
salient and they keep getting brought to
the hospital by police or they keep
destroying property or threatening their
family. Even if they keep using the meth
or whatever it is, the antiscychotic can
at least partially regulate the dopamine
and serotonin from getting to that
extreme level causing that hyper salience.
salience.
Okay. But the other issue is with
recurrent and heavy substance use if you
were getting psychosis with each
intoxication there sometimes can be a
kindling such that the psychosis does
continue. The fire keeps burning even
when the substance is stopped.
Particularly in developing brains,
adolescence and young adulthood, you are
potentially permanently altering the
dopamine limit thresholds in the
striatam with these high doses heavy
substance use and getting like a super
sensitivity psychosis from that aberant
dopamine andor you could just be causing
neurotoxicity. I mean we know that high
doses of meth do cause neurotoxicity to
dopamineergic neurons for example. So
sometimes you do get a durable psychosis
that started with meth psychosis. It was
substance induced but then it becomes
well it becomes what we currently call
schizophrenia once it persists for 6
months from stopping the drug. So that's
all to say there are people with a
schizophrenia that is a purely organic
if you like uh that is it started with
no substance use seems to be more
genetic or neurodedevelopmental in some
fashion and that's more like something
the person has in the perspectives model
it's the disease model and then there
are people with a pure substance induced
psychosis that is transient and
eventually resolves with full wash out
of the substances and getting over the withdrawal
withdrawal
But there is also this vast swath of
middle ground. And often times the
schizophrenia label gets used for for
all of this. And I actually think that's
to the detriment of our understanding of
these processes because to me it's kind
of like lumping things together that
obviously have some kind of different pathophysiology.
pathophysiology.
But I don't want to get into just
talking about schizophrenia. But you can
see how people might think of biological
factors as the beginning of the thing.
the biology is upstream to everything
else or the biology underlies everything
else. But there are certainly things we
can do, things that we do that feed back
onto our biology that change our
biology. So again, these layers are
constantly in flux with each other.
Now, one additional thing I'll try to go
into quickly, there are reports of Nick
Reiner having had a medication change
three or four weeks prior to the
murders. At least at the time of this
video, that's the report. I think this
is probably too speculative here, but
just as a sort of prediction that maybe
one day if it comes out, we'll see
whether I'm right about this, I'm going
to guess that he may have previously
been on a full potency
antagonist of dopamine, so a a full
potency antiscychotic,
and that he hated it. He was either
complaining about the side effects or
stopped taking it. and that they then
tried to put him on a partial dopamine
agonist something like ariprazole,
brexipol or coriprizine. Again this is
if medications played a role but the
reason for that would be a full
antagonist like a haloperadol or a
respirone is like turning your dopamine
receptors all the way off just turning
the switch off whereas a partial agonist
like aripzrazol is like a dimmer switch
so restricting the light but letting
some through. Now, a lot of people
prefer these these partial ones, and for
good reason, if they work for you, but
for people that have had chronic
psychosis and have been on a long-term
full antagonist, it is like you got used
to operating in the dark, right? All the
switches were off or all the ones the
full antagonist were binding were off
and you were sort of operating in the
dark, developing night vision. Then if
you switch to a partial agonist, all of
the switches get put on dim light,
albeit but light, and it's it's like a
flood, and you get this kind of super
sensitivity psychosis. You can actually
get much worse suddenly from a switch
like that. So, having seen this, I would
actually advocate for just a very
gradual taper down from a full antagonist.
antagonist.
um just so you're you're gradually
getting less and less of your light
switches turned off and adjusting to the
light that way rather than the sudden
switch to the partial agonist. Okay?
Because it's like your eyes aren't
adjusted in that case.
But again, I'll say recreational drugs
can certainly cause a super sensitivity
psychosis on their own uh because
they're actually, you know, operating on
dopamine in massive spikes and and
crests themselves.
uh crests and falls rather. So I'm not
saying I think this is a med issue
primarily. There's just not enough
information on this at least at this
point. We need to move on to the
psychological layer, the question of who
the person is. So what is the
personality we might anticipate or glean
in such a case? For one, again, remember
all of the layers affect all the others.
And I don't want to sound like a broken
record, but heavy substance use starting
in adolescence, age 14 in Nick Reiner's
case, or at least he went to rehab right
before he turned 15 for the first time.
That is going to have a massive impact
on the personality. You know, there is
this sort of common wisdom by now that
in some ways your development freezes at
the time you start using heavy
substances or at the times an addiction
starts because it it supersedes any
other sort of developmental steps. it
becomes the true north of your compass.
So adolescents are simultaneously too
self-aware and not self-aware enough. Um
as they build up their personality and
and find their identity, they are
constantly self-monitoring because you
know they're worried about how they're
coming off. They need the feedback from
their peers to establish themselves as a
self. But oftentimes they're they're
incorrect for a while about how they're
coming off because you know that's what
learning is. have to be wrong for a
while in the things you're doing and
hopefully the mistakes you make uh are
not such that you completely derail your
life. You know, hopefully you have a
supportive enough environment where you
can make mistakes sort of safely as an
adolescent. And I do feel for parents
who can only do so much to create a
supportive environment given that
another crucial part of adolescence is
separating from the parents, expressing
independence, etc. So rebelliousness if
that's what's necessary to separate from
the parents is is in fact part of adolescence.
adolescence.
And so what adolescence are looking for
is their role their role in the world.
Who am I? What am I good at? Where do I
fit? Now if this need is frustrated
there are some psychological strategies
that seem to emerge.
One is to construct a grandio self
perhaps. So if the wound is I am nobody
or I fit in nowhere perhaps one kind of
answer is I must in fact be the most
important person in the world and if the
world doesn't see that that's the
world's problem right this is a sort of
way to protect the ego from being a
nobody or for feeling like you haven't
found your role is to say in fact I have
this great role that other people don't
understand so that's that is protective
in some ways to a to a sensitive ego especially
especially
Another sort of strategy to address not
finding your role would be potentially
to lean into a negative identity. In
other words, to say, well, if I can't be
the best at something good, then I'll be
the best at something bad, right? I'll
be the best at being addicted. I'll I'll
do the hardest drugs. I'll be the
manipulator. I'll be the the
con artist. This kind of thing. because
at least that's somebody, you know. So,
you can see we're getting into the life
story perspective here. And of course, I
have to acknowledge the shadow of the
Reiner Hollywood dynasty, which may
indeed have felt like an impossible
standard. And in Nick Reiner's life
story, theoretically could have created
this kind of who am I frustration where
it feels like the answer, the automatic
answer was only ever Rob Reiner's son,
Carl Riner's grandson. And that probably
could not be a satisfactory answer by
itself. You know, we all want in our
core to be our own free selves.
>> Yeah, that it really clicked for me
because we didn't bond a lot as a kid.
like he really liked baseball. I like
basketball and he could watch that with
my brother but baseball. But I I just
when I saw him do that and it was
something that I'm interested in, I was
like, "Wow." Like he really knows a lot
and like it made me feel closer to him
and be like, "Yeah,
>> you're like, "Wow, my dad's Rob Reiner.
>> I never had thought about it." And then
>> Yeah. It didn't cross your mind, right? Never
Never
>> never watched A Few Good Men. Didn't see
that one.
>> No. So there, for example, making this
point that, oh, we bonded because I got
to see my dad in his element working on
a movie and it sort of clicked for me.
Oh yeah, this this is what he's an
expert at. The host sort of says it's
like, oh, my dad's Rob Reiner. And this
this sardonic sort of, yeah, I never
realized that before. Doesn't really
seem like Nick thinks this is actually
funny. He's not trying to really laugh
about this. He's sort of like clenching
his teeth a bit.
You're like, "Wow, my dad's Rob Reiner."
>> I never had thought about it. And then,
>> yeah, it didn't cross your mind, right? Never.
Never.
>> Never watched A Few Good Men. Didn't see
that one.
>> The reality behind the sardonic joke
here is, of course, that he has been
constantly aware that Rob Reiner is his
father. And in fact, he was trying not
to think about that part, but rather
think of his role being a screenwriter
working with a director, not his role
just being Rob Reiner's son. The other
thing to consider is that personality or
character is in some ways just your
particular collection of defense
mechanisms. In other words, what do you
do when times get tough? What do you do
under great stress or under turmoil?
That's where your character emerges.
It's also where your personality
pathologies might emerge, your defense
mechanisms. So do you use healthy
defense mechanisms like sublimation,
humor, altruism,
or perhaps do you revert to say
grandiosity, fantasies of infinite
power? Now why am I even talking about
grandiosity when almost nothing about
Nick Reiner appears that way? He seems
rather timid or uh maybe standoffish but
shy at times, right?
Well, I would argue that there may be a
private fantasy in some people that
desires expression, but for the most
part is too afraid of being deflated to
dare express itself.
>> Nick, how involved were you with the
casting and everything? I mean, this
this kid is amazing in the in the film.
He's an incredible lead. I've never seen
>> people know Nick Robinson.
>> He was given good
>> Yeah, he's a really good actor. I mean,
he was in that. So, they're talking
about the the lead cast, the guy who
plays Nick Reiner's inspired character.
Nick Reiner starts saying he was given
good writing, but checks himself because
he realizes, "Oh, my dad wants to praise
this actor. I'll I'll hang back."
>> This this kid is amazing in the in the
film. He's an incredible lead. I've
never seen
>> people know Nick Robinson.
>> He was given good
>> Yeah. He's a really good actor. I mean,
he was in that Kings this summer and
he's in Jurassic World. He's a a great
actor and Nick was there for all the casting.
casting.
>> But the most important thing about that
character trait is not the grandiosity
itself, but the sensitivity to
deflation, the ego sensitivity. What I
see in the moment is sometimes this
frustration with not getting to go all
the way on Nick's part.
>> Yeah. from my own experiences and from
also seeing other people going through
it and also the varying establishments
that I was in, you really get a sense
for that whole world. So, and not it's
not like copy and pasted, but it's
definitely derivative of uh you know,
reality. sort of like a four-year
process. Like first we started out with
this like slapsticky halfhour comedy
pilot that was horrendous, bad jokes and
everything. And he looked at it and was
like, eh. And then we did
>> I just felt he could go deeper. He could
go deeper with it. I mean, it was funny,
but I felt the subject matter, you know,
should allow him to go deeper with it.
>> Yeah. Well, that wasn't said at the
time. It was sort of just like, hey,
this is trash. But anyways, we went we
went along and uh
>> so I think on one level Nick Reiner
likes getting to be the one who tells
the story of being a screenwriter. He's
trying to individuate live here on this
interview saying here's what my process
was like and then of course my dad said
it was trash because he can't sort of
help but but try to get one of these
pretty mild sort of cutting remarks but
but meaningful perhaps you know in terms
of the life story. I kind of see it as
it being the closest Nick Reiner ever
got to making a fantasy into a reality.
The fantasy that he could in fact be his
own Reiner, that he could be a Hollywood
screenwriter, that that he went on press
tours, that he was getting interviewed.
In some ways, I think this is when it
seemed like things were going the best
for Nick Reiner. You know, he seemed to
be coming out of his shell. He's
finally, it's me getting interviewed,
but at the same time,
he can't he cannot avoid the anger at
these perceived slights. Like when he
indicates that he didn't get to make any
casting decisions other than one.
>> He's a a great actor and Nick was there
for all the casting uh uh you know, all
of the the auditions.
>> I was sitting there, but
>> yeah, but you had you you always gave
your opinion. I I was like I I I saw
that girl Morgan Sailor on Homeland and
I think during the season she like went
to rehab or something and I was just
like a she's a perfect rehab girl. >> Yeah,
>> Yeah,
>> that was the only
>> He pushed he pushed for Morgan Sailor
like crazy.
>> You just you had a personal con. So
Rob's sort of trying to give him credit
for this one casting decision, but
clearly Nick feels as though I was just
sitting there sort of undermining what's
supposed to be this moment of talking
about collaboration by saying, "Yeah, I
didn't really get to make any decisions."
decisions."
So, if we fast forward to that party on
December 13th, that's nine years since
the press tour for Being Charlie, a
movie which, by the way, was critically
panned and may have represented an even
further deflation than his feeling
talked over in the press tour
interviews, but he essentially went into
hiding sometime after that, or at least
disappeared from the public eye.
It's been, I believe, seven years since
he was on the Dopey podcast where he'd
made recurrent appearances for a time
talking about recovery despite his
ongoing active substance use, which he
was upfront about on those calls. But in
the interim, we really don't know what
was happening other than he seems to
have quickly abandoned this last final
thrust to establish himself as someone
great or at least in his eyes someone
doing something big. That is, he seemed
to disappear from the public eye until
his reintroduction to us under
horrifying circumstances. But finally,
if we are to consider the person behind
the diagnosis,
there is a misconception that when
psychosis takes over, if psychosis takes
over, the person disappears, that the
disease replaces the man. But I don't
believe that's really true. And in some
ways, that's what makes it so so
difficult to watch. But personality does
not vanish because of psychosis. I kind
of think of the mind like a a glass
screen. This is just one analogy, but
but imagine your your mind is projected
onto this screen and that psychosis can
strike that screen and and shatter it.
But the thing is screens don't don't
just shatter randomly. there are certain
fault lines or structural
vulnerabilities that lead to certain
somewhat general patterns or c certain
reliable ways that things fracture, you
know, and so you're left with this
cracked screen and perhaps with some
some hypercoloration, you know, some
overly saturated portions of the screen
just as a person's mind will be altered
in its coloration. It will have some
hypers saturation or hypers salience.
But the movie playing on the broken
screen still originates from the person.
It just becomes distorted and twisted by
the cracks and the colors of the break.
So in Nick's case, we see a young man
who was reportedly insecure, perhaps
feeling invisible in a family of of giants,
giants,
feeling prevented from becoming a self
other than the rebellious substance user
who did not want to listen to anyone.
But it seems with a psychosis, whether
substance induced or otherwise, it took
some of these insecurities and refracted
them into some kind of terrifying
internal logic that only he could understand.
understand.
You know, at that party, asking people,
"Are you famous?" and then staring down
someone who rebuffed him, potentially
then being rebuffed publicly by the very
person that he blamed with his internal
logic for all of his prior failures, for
all of his dashed dreams of becoming someone.
someone.
I think this is a dangerous confluence.
You know when a mind is in a hypers
salient psychotic state when it's also
extremely sensitive to slight of the ego
and because the internal logic the
disorganized logic is beholden only to
itself the most heinous acts can
suddenly be justified.
So again, Nick Reiner is innocent until
proven guilty. And what I have detailed
is primarily a formulation of general
principles of psychosis, ego
sensitivity, and substance use. Thank
you for watching. I'm sorry we had to
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