Nick Reiner has lived a life few of us will understand.
He was into drugs and into rehab very early in his teen years and it does not appear he was able to graduate from the high school he started, and was only able to after enrolling in various alternative high schools.
It does not appear that he has ever had a job. Beside the fact that he could be supported by his family, he doesn't seem to have had the incentive to pursue any vocation or job that would provide social interaction or intellectual stimulation.
He never enrolled in college as far as I can tell.
He's now 32, not 22 and he seems to be most proud of sleeping on the streets and being homeless, despite there being numerous attempts to provide a safe shelter for him. It's not like he tried to start a band, become an artist, even become an actor like his father. The film he worked on with his father was his father's idea and Nick admitted he was still using even though his father thought he was clean. Nice way to get back at his Dad.
I just wonder if these rehabs did not have the kind of professional support that could drill down to the kind of mental disorder or psychosocial disorder he had. I don't think his life sounds like solely teen rebellion and drug use. I think there is a mental disorder that has been unrecognized or mis-diagnosed, or undertreated. It certainly is not uncommon for a young male teen to manifest signs of a severe mental disorder at about his age. Unfortunately, is is also not uncommon for these individuals to start on treatment, then stop when they start to feel better.
I think it is so sad that his parents believed that the "people with the degrees on the walls" were failing him by telling his parents that he was lying and manipulative. It sounds absolutely correct to me and large amounts of parental love and even permissiveness were not going to help. He's had so many stints in rehab he can recite the programs, the agreements, and game the system, only to relapse when the addiction starts to rear it's ugly head.