Accused double murderer Nick Reiner once admitted he got hooked on heroin only after his parents put him in a New Age rehab facility in the Utah wilderness when he was just 16.
Reiner, who is accused of stabbing to death his dad, Hollywood legend Rob Reiner, and his mom, Michele, claimed in a newly resurfaced podcast interview that he only became exposed to the harder drugs after his stint at an expensive, nature-based therapy program for teens.
“I went to a wilderness program in Utah. It was called Second Nature, and I met a kid there from LA and, at the time, he was kind of a hardcore Venice kid,” Reiner told the “Dopey” podcast in 2016.
Nick Reiner once admitted he got hooked on heroin only after his parents put him in a ritzy rehab facility in the Utah wilderness when he was just 16. BACKGRID“I met him when I was 16 and then, I was 18, I was in a sober living [facility], and I call him up because I knew he was really into heroin at the time.”
The iconic director’s troubled middle child, now 32, said he then went to Skid Row with his former rehab pal and shot up for the first time.
“The point of the story is that the seed of heroin got planted by the first time I was ever in rehab and the person I got it from was a guy that I met in rehab like three years down the line,” Reiner said.
“For all the negative that I think it did to me, it also exposed me to a larger demographic of people.”
The “nature-based” program, which was founded in 1998 by clinicians, secludes teens ages 13 to 17 in the wilderness in a bid to help them kick their habits.
Rob Reiner, Michele Singer, Romy Reiner, Nick Reiner, Maria Gilfillan and Jake Reiner at “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues” Los Angeles premiere at the Egyptian Theatre on Sept. 9, 2025, in Los Angeles, California. Variety via Getty Images
Savanna Boda, who attended Second Nature. Facebook / Savanna Boda
Second Nature, an expensive, nature-based therapy program. Second Nature Wilderness Family TherapyReiner, who has struggled with drug addiction for more than half his life and was diagnosed with schizophrenia, has been in and out of more than a dozen rehab programs since he was 15 years old.
He had reportedly been receiving treatment at a $70,000-per-month mental health and substance abuse facility in LA around the time of his parents’ slayings.
The drug confession podcast interview resurfaced after Reiner was arrested for allegedly knifing his parents to death in their Brentwood mansion on Dec. 14 — just hours after he and his father got into an ugly public shouting match at Conan O’Brien’s Christmas party.
