Did Nick Reiner Go Downhill Because of his Therapy?

Authorities say both victims died from “multiple sharp force injuries.” Nick has not entered a plea, and the case is ongoing. As investigators piece together the events leading up to the deaths, attention has turned to his long history of addiction, mental illness, and treatment, including a controversial wilderness program in Utah he entered as a teenager.

Friends and former patients of the program say it is impossible to ignore Nick’s own account of how his time there intersected with his later heroin use. Speaking on the Dopey podcast in 2016, Nick described being sent at 16 to a Utah wilderness camp called Second Nature after refusing to attend high school and experimenting with drugs.

“I went to a wilderness program in Utah. It was called Second Nature, and I met a kid there from L.A. and, at the time, he was kind of a hardcore Venice kid,” he said. Nick went on to explain how that encounter followed him years later.

“I met him when I was 16 and then, (when) I was 18, I was in a sober living, and I call him up because I knew he was really into heroin at the time,” he confessed.