After Rob Reiner and his spouse, Michele, had been stabbed to dying, President Donald Trump went off on a social media tear denouncing Rob Reiner for supposedly having a “thoughts crippling illness generally known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.” Requested concerning the remark, Trump doubled down, saying that Reiner was “a deranged individual” who “was very unhealthy for our nation.”
Trump appeared guilty Reiner for his personal homicide, saying that he drove folks loopy and reportedly died “because of the anger he brought about.” If that was meant as a reference to the arrest of the Reiners’ son Nick in reference to the killing, Laura Loomer, Trump’s far-right ally, made this specific. She stated of Rob Reiner: “Naturally, his son was additionally a loser, and he received hooked on medicine and allegedly murdered his mother and father.”
All that is so vile and graceless within the face of what will be the worst form of household tragedy, a patricide and matricide. We yearn for leaders to unite us, to assist us heal after tragedies, to supply an ethical imaginative and prescient in addition to a political agenda. As an alternative, Trump as soon as once more magnifies hatreds and divisions within the crassest approach; he appears to exult in cruelty.
So by all means, let’s condemn the president’s dehumanizing language concerning the Reiners. However I hope we are able to additionally go a step additional and work to scale back such tragedies.
Nick Reiner has struggled with habit since he was a youngster. Our metric for habit tends to be overdose deaths — greater than 80,000 in america in 2024 — however the toll is way increased. It’s discovered within the ache in so many properties, amongst mother and father bewildered by a toddler’s self-destructiveness, as they toss about all night time questioning what they did fallacious, as they fear that the jangle of the cellphone will report an overdose, as they attempt to comprehend a descent into homelessness, prostitution or violence, as their concern for a kid typically evolves into concern of a kid. Dependancy carves an unlimited river of ache by means of America.
That appears to have been the story of the Reiners. “We had been determined,” Rob Reiner as soon as stated of their efforts to assist their son, who first went into rehab at round 15 and estimated that he had been by means of 18 bouts of rehab whereas nonetheless a youngster. One can solely think about the Reiners’ anguish as they noticed him turn into homeless and repeatedly relapse.
Dependancy shadowed the Reiners’ dwelling and in addition Joe Biden’s. However principally it haunts the powerless and invisible who typically can’t get satisfactory assist — and maybe partly as a result of it’s so stigmatized, it doesn’t get the eye or treatments which are wanted.
Trump has proven periodic curiosity within the toll of medication in America and is spending hundreds of thousands of {dollars} on an unlimited navy deployment within the Caribbean on the supposed foundation that Venezuela is transport fentanyl to america. (The truth is, Venezuela ships principally cocaine, not fentanyl, and the medicine go principally to Europe moderately than America.)
If Trump’s antidrug efforts had been critical moderately than performative, he could be increasing Medicaid and different initiatives that assist remedy for individuals who use them. It needs to be a nationwide scandal that fewer than one-fifth of People who want remedy for substance use dysfunction get it.
I’ve written about the perfect drug remedy program I do know of, referred to as Girls in Restoration, in Tulsa, Oklahoma; it needs to be scaled up for women and men alike throughout the nation.
Therapy is imperfect, as Nick Reiner’s journey reveals, for his household had assets to get him assist however struggled to tug him from the vortex of medication. I’ve additionally identified many individuals whose lives had been saved by remedy. Two of these had been individuals who I believe had been able to homicide once they had been excessive and strung out.
Seriousness about habit would additionally entail addressing the underlying causes that lead folks to self-medicate with medicine. Meaning beginning with younger youngsters and addressing traumas, getting youngsters by means of college and on a path to school or a commerce.
Why am I so captivated with this subject? As a result of my hometown in rural Oregon noticed factories and sawmills shut and meth arrive — and so many households have been bathed in ache since. By this 12 months, one-third of the children who rode with me on the No. 6 college bus in Yamhill, Oregon, are gone from medicine, alcohol or suicide. Two died on the streets whereas homeless. A number of dedicated brutal crimes. One neighbor usually let her drug supplier rape her seventh-grade daughter in alternate for meth.
After I wrote books about this uncared for miasma of struggling, strangers would method me and open up to whispers that their son was homeless or their daughter was in jail. It is a nationwide trauma that we People have by no means adequately confronted.
If you happen to’re in search of a option to step up, right here’s one other concept. Yearly I’ve a vacation giving information recommending a number of nonprofits that I deeply admire for his or her effectiveness. This 12 months, one of many nonprofits I like to recommend is Imaginative and prescient to Be taught, working right here in america to get glasses within the palms of low-income youngsters in order that they’ll see, do schoolwork and succeed. With out glasses, they too typically turn into disruptive troublemakers on a downhill trajectory; research discover that glasses make an unlimited distinction in outcomes.
Getting youngsters glasses will not be going to finish the scourge of medication in America, however it will probably remodel the lives of some younger youngsters. It represents lighting a candle moderately than cursing the darkness. If you wish to be part of our effort, you’ll be able to donate at KristofImpact.org, and all contributions might be matched.
Or there are different methods to step up, for there are millions of good organizations constructing alternative and making an attempt to push again on the indifference. That feels much more constructive — even presidential — than heaping scorn on the grave of a murdered couple who, for all their fame and achievement, had been only a heartsick mother and pa.
