The Shadows We Don't See

We all know the name Rob Reiner. He was the man who taught us that love means never having to say you're sorry. Well, actually, he taught us that this one goes to eleven and that as you wish is the ultimate profession of love. From Spinal Tap to the Princess Bride, Reiner's work was the heartbeat of American cinema. But on December fourteenth, twenty twenty five, that heartbeat stopped in a way no one could have ever scripted. Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle were found in their Brentwood home. It wasn't a peaceful passing, it was a tragedy. Today Weis's Thoughts. We aren't here for the tabloid details. We are here to talk about the why and specifically the role that mental health and medication management may have played in the life of their son, Nick, and how a family that tried everything still ended up in a nightmare. It's time for a virtual campfire sit down with Terry Weiss. Wilcome to Weiss's Thoughts. Hey, everybody, welcome to the program. Welcome to a very special edition of Weis's Thoughts Today. I'm Terry Weiss, and if you'd like to listen to more episodes of the podcast end of the program. It's very simple, my friends. Just go to Weis's Thoughts dot com Wyce Weiss's thoughts dot com. You can listen to each and every episode of this podcast as well as comment on the shows and much much more. It's all waiting for you at weissthoughts dot com. And also you can check out my YouTube channel by the same name, Weis's Thoughts. And if you want to look at me on X. I used to say tweet at me on Twitter, but now it's it's a little different. It's X. It's at Terry Weiss. Pretty easy to go there. All right, let's get right into the program today because this is this one is really it's emotional and it hits home for me and we're gonna we're gonna talk about it today on the program. And sorry about that little technical difficulties. This one. This one's a really an emotional episode for me, and it really does hit home because it's just a senseless, senseless tragedy and we all know what happened December the fourteenth, here, twenty twenty five, and we're going to try to understand the end that we have to, you know, to understand the end of what happened to Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle, we have to start and the beginning and look at the journey. Rob and Michelle weren't just Hollywood royalty. They were parents in the trenches. Their son, Nick had been open about his struggles for years homelessness, addiction rehab. Rob even directed a film Being Charlie, based on Nick's life, to try to bridge the gap between them. But here's here's the thing, my friends, there's some new details that has emerged here since the arrests. Reports indicate that just weeks before the tragedy, Nick was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Now, for anyone who has dealt with this in their family, you know that a diagnosis isn't an end, it's the start of a very dangerous medication window. This is where things get technical and heartbreaking. When someone is diagnosed with a severe mental health disorder like schizophrenia, the stabilization period is the most volatile time. Medications like antipsychotics don't work like aspirin. They don't fix the problem in thirty minutes. They take weeks to reach therapeutic levels in the brain and innix't case. We have to ask was he in that cap that period where the old coping mechanisms drugs in his case are being stripped away, but the new medication hasn't yet quieted the noise. There are reports of a heated argument the night before. In the world of pharmacology, we call it paradoxal activation, or simply a failure to stabilize. If the medication wasn't managed correctly, or if he stopped taking it due to side effects, the results can be catastrophic. Robin Michelle were the nicest people in Hollywood, ask anyone, with every resource at their disposal, and yet police had been to that house many many times over the last decade. This tells us that even with money, even with fame, the current state of medication assisted treatment for dual diagnosis patients, addiction, and mental illnesses is a fractured map. Just to give you an idea, okay, of some of the things that they were dealing with, think about it. I want you to think about some things here, okay. And the reason we're doing this podcast today here in Waste's Thoughts, is because me and my wife recently watched a report from TMZ and NBC News about Nick's Reiner's doctors had changed his medication for schizo effective disorder roughly a month before the tragic deaths of Rob Reiner and Michelle. In the medical world, this is the danger zone. Statistics show that nearly one in four patients stopped taking their meds within the first seven days of a change because of the side effects like extreme restlessness or brain fog, and those things hit before the therapeutic benefits. Do think about that. You have a thirty two year old man who is already delusional according to court sources, believing there's a conspiracy against him. You take away the old meds and introduce new ones. For those thirty days, his brain was essentially a construction site. With no foreman. He wasn't just unstable, he was in a state of paradoxal activation, where the very treatment meant to help can in the short term make a patient more erratic and even more dangerous. When we look at the fifty percent non adherence rate, let me state that again, a fifty percent non adherence rate in schizophrenia, we realize we are just looking at a bad choice. We're looking at a biological failure. Medigation gap isn't just a medical term, okay, it's a life or death reality with five times higher relapse risk during medication changes. So why is the system leaving families like the Rhiners to manage this alone? Why over forty to sixty patients that suffer with severe mental illness struggle with medication adherents, And in the case of Nick Reiner, a medication change just weeks before the tragedy may have been the tipping point. And as me and my wife watched this special from TMZ look for it on your local cable system provider, we asked ourselves some very hard questions. Okay, why wasn't this young man committed? Why wasn't he held? Why wouldn't these treatment centers knowingly knowing what was going on? Why did they release him? They in the special interviewed some other people that have gone through similar things as far as with changing medication, and they were there six eight months or more until they can get stabilized with proper therapy and medication and monitoring. And it seems like it seems like that the centers that were treating Nick Reiner just kind of chewed him up and spin him out within a month or so if medication played a role, it wasn't because it caused the violence, but perhaps because the system of delivering that medication is so flawed we ask our loved ones to manage their own powerful prescriptions while they're in the midst of a break from reality. I mean, come on, folks, that's a tall order. It's I would dare say, even an impossib civil order. It's just it's crazy. This was a senseless, senseless tragedy that really, honestly, I feel could have been could have been prevented. I really feel it could have been prevented. Hey, you waste lots listeners. Are you looking for a simple way to level up your focus and energy? Well, you know, on this podcast, I talk a lot about health and vitality. That's why I'm excited to share some information about empower Plus. It's a functional superfood green powder from in Dear Life. It features powerful ingredients like lions main for cognition and broccoli microgreens for anti inflammatory support, and it's all in one scoop. I want to try it out. Well, right now, you can get fifteen percent off your entire order. That's right, fifteen percent off your whole order. That dear life. Just visit a dear life dot com. That's E d E R R A l y f E dot com. Use my special code Weiss Save. That's w y C E S A v E at the checkout that's Weiss save for fifteen percent off at a dear life dot com. Fuel your thoughts and save Today. We're in his sunglasses indoors just because he wants to. Let's step back to the program. Here's your host, Terry Weiss. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the podcast. Welcome to Wife's Thoughts. I'm Terry Weiss and uh not a show I was or an episode of hoping I would ever have to do about anyone, let alone Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle and their tragic, tragic, untimely deaths. But thanks for. Listening to the program, and remember for more episodes of White's Thoughts, go to witte thoughts dot com. And if and if you have any feedback about the show, you can do it on the website there, or by all means, reach out to me at Terry T E R R Y Terry at Weiss w y C E Weiss thoughts dot com, or you can you know, interact with me on social media. We are on Instagram at Weiss Productions X at Terry Weiss as well. So before we took a quick break there, we were talking about, you know, medication and how it may have played a role in this horrific tragedy, and just some statistics I was able to you know, get get get into here, and I'll tell you the relapse multiplier, I mean, discontinuing or improperly adjusting antipsychotic medication, okay, increases the risk of a psychotic relapse by nearly five times five times. And again there's a transition period. Approximately twenty five percent of patients discontinue their medication within the first week after being discharged from an inpatient care or switching prescriptions to you know, that's the exact window Nick Reiner was reportedly in. And also treatment resistance between twenty to sixty percent. Between twenty and sixty six to zero percent of patients are treatment resistant, meaning standard medications simply do not provide the necessary stabilization. You know, it's it's horrific, It's absolutely horrific. All right, let's let's just think about something for a minute. Okay, think let's let's talk about the science here behind the tragedy. According to reports from TMZ and NBC News, Nick Reiner's doctors had changed his medication for schizo effective disorder roughly a month before the incident. And again in the medical world, this is the danger zone, and statistics show that nearly one in four patients stopped taking their meds within the first seven days of a change because of the side effects like extreme restlessness or brain fog, and it hit long before their benefits. Doe, think about it. You have a thirty two year old man who's already delusional according to the court sources, like we were talking about here, thinking there's a conspiracy against him. You take away the old meds and introduce these new ones for those thirty days. We talked about this earlier and I'm repeating it. His brain was essentially a construction site with no form and. It's just. A senseless, senseless tragedy that really, really could have been avoided. And again, we were watching the special and you can probably find it online or in one of the websites there from TMZ and NBC News also picked up the story. You know, this could have been avoided. I believe that Rob Reiner. You know, Robert and Michelle did everything they could. I mean, it's not like they just said, ah, you know what, it's your own fault, the hell with it, you're on your own. I mean, they put this young man in treatment centers, helped him. He was self medicating with drugs and alcohol because he did have an issue, a severe mental health issue, okay, a severe one. So he was self medicating like a lot of people do in society. But when he finally started getting you know, over a decade, they tried to help their son. It's not like they abandoned him or had some kind of crazy tough love thing or they said, piss on it, you're on your own, buddy. They didn't do anything like that. They loved their son. I deeply, I deeply believe, deep down it. They loved their boy, that was their child. And it just goes to show you can have all the money in the world. I mean, I'm sure Rob Reiner and Michelle here they didn't say, oh, I mean, we really can't afford to say them to treatment. Money was no object. I'm sure, and I think and again this is just excuse me, this is. Just my opinion. This is my opinion, But I think they were taken advantage of by a system of medical professionals, the medical community. Now I could be entirely wrong. Again, this is just my conjecture, my speculation, my opinion. I have no facts to support what I'm saying. But I'm just wondering if they weren't taken advantage of because of their a high profile status and b their wealth. I mean, how could you look at someone in this state and say, Okay, the evidence supports that when we change medications, no matter who his doctors were, or therapists or whoever, say, you know, the evidence shows when we change people on this medication. You know there's a couple three months, ninety days at least, it's at least, you know, a month to ninety days. That this is a very volatile time. There's a lot of failure rate, there's a lot of you know, erratic, extreme behavioral changes that are taking place. Maybe we ought to, you know, make sure he doesn't go anywhere into a dare I say, a secure facility that has some form of restraint that he can't just check himself out. Now, I know you say, Terry, he's a grown man. He's over thirty years old. He's a grown ass man. But at some point, you know, if you've got a severe mental health disorder, you've exhibited erratic behavior in the past, you're a known drug addict, what have you. Sometimes we have to do what's best, not only for yourself but for society, as is perfect example in this case. And I think maybe they were just taken advantage of by a medical system that saw dollar signs. And again I have no proof to this, I have no facts. I have no It's just my conjecture, my speculation. But who knows more make come out it just you know, if I was a healthcare professional and working at a facility and I have these statistics, everybody says. Follow the science, follow the science. Well, the science was saying this overwhelmingly happens in a majority of cases. So to give my patient the best outcome, I've got to look at that information and say, Okay, what is the logical choice here, what is the logical thing to do? And do it? And it didn't happen, and now two people are dead and his parents. I mean, if this young man had a break from reality and was in a state where he didn't know up from down, left from right, wrong from you know, black from white and wrong from right. And now he comes out of this state and he realizes, oh my god, I've murdered my parents. I don't know. We're going to find out. As we remember Rob's laughter and Michelle's activism, Let's use this moment to think about the people in our own lives. Medication is a tool, but it is not a cure all. It takes a village. At the Golden Globes this year, the tribute was a spinal tap hat and a joke about going to eleven. But for the Reiner family, the volume got too loud to bear. Let's try to turn it down for the next family. Thanks for listening to wife's thoughts. Hey, thanks for listening to the program today. I truly appreciate each and every one of you out there, and remember to see a change in the world. To be the change in the world you want to see. It all starts with you, the person looking back at you in the mirror every morning. Remember to be kind to yourself, be kind to others. If you want to tweet at me on Twitter, it's at Terry Weiss. Stop by the website. Weis's Thoughts dot com. Just to make sure you spell my name right. Wye Wiys's Thoughts dot com, and hey, leave us a positive rating and review on your favorite podcast provider. Won't you tell your friends, tell your family, tell your pets about White's Thoughts, and I look forward to gathering yet again around the virtual campfire with you real soon. Take care, they Swan best best