Harrowing accusations from inside Nick Reiner rehab as fellow patients speak out and his heroin use emerges
Accused double-murderer Nick Reiner’s troubled life seemingly took a turn for the worse in a secluded therapy camp deep in the Utah wilderness.
At the tender age of 16, the middle child of legendary Hollywood director Rob Reiner and wife Michele was refusing to go to high school and had already dabbled in drug use.
And with the ritzy rehabs of Malibu and Los Angeles seemingly not curing their troubled son, the Reiners admitted Nick into a more extreme program at Second Nature in Utah.
The treatment center, which was founded in 1998 by ‘a small group of clinicians,’ claims on its website to use a ‘nomadic backpacking approach’ to teach adolescents ‘what it means to meet challenges directly and authentically.’
However, seven years after his stint at Second Nature, Nick confessed in a 2016 podcast interview that he believed the program may have done more harm than good.
‘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,’ he explained in an episode of the Dopey podcast.
Rob Reiner and wife Michele Reiner sent their son Nick Reiner to Second Nature in Utah in an attempt to rehabilitate him following years of drug use
Second Nature was founded in 1998 and claims it uses a ‘nomadic backpacking approach’ to aid troubled teens
‘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.’
Nick shared that he and his friend then went to an undisclosed location near Skid Row, the dodgy Los Angeles neighborhood known for its rampant drug trades and homelessness, where he was shot up with the illegal opioid 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,’ he added. ‘For all the negative that I think it did to me, it also exposed me to a larger demographic of people.’
The Daily Mail spoke exclusively to two women who attended Second Nature in 2007 and 2012, respectively, around the same time Nick attended. They did not meet or know Nick personally, but both shared some compassion for the ‘suffering’ he had experienced as a teen.
Savanna Boda told the Daily Mail that, like Nick, she was exposed to conversations about drug use while at Second Nature, adding, ‘I got curious to try marijuana when I got out of there because I learned so much from the kids that I was around.’
In retrospect, she said the camaraderie she formed with her fellow teens at age 15 was one of the few bright spots in what she now remembers as a very dark time.
She described a harrowing living environment at Second Nature, in which she was allegedly forced to live completely outdoors seven days a week for three months in the freezing cold Utah winter temperatures and denied basic needs.
‘We did frostbite checks on our feet every hour to make sure we were not losing toes,’ she claimed. ‘It was freezing. It’s so hard to go through.’
The Daily Mail spoke to two women, including Savanna Boda (right), who attended Second Nature as teens. Boda claimed she was deprived of basic needs during her time there
‘It was freezing. It’s so hard to go through,’ Boda, now 28, told Daily Mail exclusively
After hiking about seven miles a day in the snow with a heavy backpack, Boda claimed the tired and filth-ridden teens were only allowed to bathe every few days, at which point they would allegedly stand on a bandana and pour water from a bucket.
Margaret Lynd, who attended Second Nature at age 17, claimed to the Daily Mail that the college-aged counselors would often scoff at the teens, calling them ‘dirt urchins.’
‘They have a power trip,’ Boda, now 28, claimed. ‘They got off on bullying us and making our lives hell.’
Both women alleged that the counselors appeared inexperienced, did not have psychology degrees and simply took the job because they enjoyed nature.
For meals, they were allegedly only fed ‘disgusting canned, freeze-dried food,’ which could only be heated up if they mastered a skill known as ‘busting a fire.’
‘I couldn’t bust a fire for a couple of months so they were really upset with me and they made me go into fire isolation,’ Boda claimed. ‘I wasn’t allowed to eat any hot food, so I was literally freezing to death over not being able to make a fire.’
At bedtime, the teens would allegedly remain outdoors and sleep inside of a tarp, on a sleeping bag with no extra blankets and no pillows.
Their only forms of therapy, per Lynd and Boda, were sessions with an actual professional once a week and daily group therapy run by the counselors.
The teens allegedly hiked about 7 miles a day, wore dirty clothes and barely showered, according to Boda and Margaret Lynd
The teens were allegedly told they had to ‘bust a fire’ if they wanted to eat warm food
Boda (center) claimed, ‘I wasn’t allowed to eat any hot food, so I was literally freezing to death over not being able to make a fire’
In the group sessions, the teens would have to read in front of their fellow patients and staff deeply personal letters they wrote about their trauma.
Lynd, who had been raped just two months before her stint at Second Nature, claimed she had people ‘chime in’ on her story, saying, ‘Wow, it sounds like you had a really hard time. Sounds like your parents did the right thing by sending you away.’
For her, though, one of the more traumatizing parts of the whole ordeal began Day 1.
She said she was transported from her father’s home to the Utah center in the middle of the night by a process the teens have dubbed ‘gooning’ and claimed is like a kidnapping.
Lynd alleged that, around 2 am, she was put into a van by two large people, blindfolded, zip-tied and flown from a Chicago airport to Salt Lake City airport. All the while, they allegedly threatened, ‘You can come the easy way or the hard way.’
When Lynd arrived at Second Nature, she claimed she was stripped of all her belongings, stood naked in front of two women in a cold room to make sure she was ‘not hiding anything’ and forced to shower and wash her hair with lice shampoo.
‘I just don’t feel like these people care,’ Lynd, who is now 35 and runs the Sunset Wildlife Connection animal rescue, said.
‘The educational consultants will convince [the parents] that if you don’t send your child they’re going to die. That’s something that even Rob Reiner said.’
Lynd, seen here at age 17, went to Second Nature in 2007 and claimed she felt like she was being kidnapped when two large people transported her from her father’s house to the center
Lynd, now 35, claimed to Daily Mail that those who run Second Nature are ‘greedy’ and ‘corrupt,’ adding, ‘I just don’t feel like these people care’
‘There’s a quote in the movie [Being Charlie] that [Rob and Nick] produced together, “I would rather have you hate me than you die”,’ Lynd continued.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Rob once admitted that he and his wife had regrets over how they handled their son’s rehab experiences.
‘When Nick would tell us that it wasn’t working for him, we wouldn’t listen,’ the All in the Family alum shared. ‘We were desperate, and because the people had diplomas on their wall, we listened to them when we should have been listening to our son.’
Michele added at the time, ‘We were so influenced by these people. They would tell us he’s a liar, that he was trying to manipulate us. And we believed them.’
Nick, for his part, told the Dopey podcast in 2016, ‘Parents, they get scared. They don’t want to see their children die so they jump the gun.’
He shared, though, that he and his mom had had talks about whether she was to blame for his downfall and he said, ‘I don’t think that they should feel that way at all and – it’s always a person’s choice to do something.’
Boda and Lynd expressed sympathy for Rob, Michele and all the parents who send their kids to Second Nature, as they, too, are allegedly victims of manipulation
Nick said on the Dopey podcast in 2016, ‘Parents they get scared. They don’t want to see their children die so they jump the gun’
Boda – who had a friend at Second Nature named Cali Carl who died by suicide – claimed the boys at Second Nature were treated ‘a lot worse’ than the girls.
She told the Daily Mail she thought Nick ‘took his anger out on the wrong people’ if he is in fact convicted of killing his parents on Dec. 14 in their California home.
While emphasizing that she does not condone murder, the Dallas Aesthetician business owner added, ‘I know that he probably went through a lot of pain and I feel bad for his suffering and his heart.’
The women that Daily Mail spoke with reflected on their experience around the same time as Nick’s, which is not a commentary on Second Nature today.
A representative for Second Nature told the Daily Mail in response to Boda and Lynd’s claims, ‘The assertions referenced are false and misleading, and have been routinely discredited. Reputable nature-based therapeutic programs such as Second Nature are built on principles of care, compassion, empathy, and emotional safety, and are part of the continuum of mental health treatment options important to addressing the worsening mental health crisis affecting children and teens.’
‘Nature-based therapy can provide a structured, supportive environment that serves as a healthy alternative for families whose children may not have benefited from traditional outpatient or residential settings,’ the statement continued. ‘Second Nature is a licensed program, with tremendous oversight and coordination with state regulators and has an impeccable safety record over our 27 year history.’
‘All clinical services are overseen by licensed therapists who meet with clients multiple times each week and who prioritize individualized care, therapeutic rapport, and ethical practice,’ the representative concluded.
‘Parents are actively involved throughout treatment, including through regular communication, family therapy and in-person visits. We encourage prospective families to speak directly with verified alumni parents and expert professionals to gain a firsthand understanding of their experiences.’
Online reviews for Second Nature are mixed. While some are negative, others commend the program and dismiss its critics as ‘disgruntled attendees.’
A woman named Emma T., who attended Second Nature in 2006, wrote via Yelp in 2016, ‘I came to this program angry, empty and addicted. I didn’t think there was any hope for me.
‘Through some serious blood, sweat and tears I learned more about myself than I thought possible. I learned new ways to communicate about my feelings and how to connect with my family. I also made connections with incredible people that I have still kept today.’
