THE PRINTED WORD
JASON PETER: HERO OF THE UNDERGROUND

by Chris Sprow

This is a nasty book. We have to be honest.

When the protagonist begins his tale in a crack-induced paranoia about whether his girlfriend may leap from a building, and if she does, how to extricate himself from the situation, it's just a start to the compelling brutality of the prose. It's nasty. And well worth the read.

Jason Peter can discuss drugs the way Neil Armstrong can describe a lunar landing. It's as though his experience is unique. It isn't of course, which makes the fact that the book is so engrossing both a credit to its author, and a statement on the depths that the former Nebraska star plummeted before crawling back to sobriety. Peter, an All-American as a Husker and first-round draft pick of the Carolina Panthers in 1998, was forced from football prematurely by injuries. He quickly fell apart. Since then, he's found a new life, but in his autobiography, Hero of the Underground, he forces himself to go back and talk about the old one. Here, he talks to us.

THE MAG: First of all, this book starts with a guy downing sixty Vicodin and a gallon of vodka in his gut, and it actually spirals down from there.
JASON PETER: I was actually really nervous for my family and my wife to read it, because the last thing I wanted to do was have something out there that they were embarrassed or ashamed about, but I also feel like they knew. I mean, I feel like my family knew I was at this point, my wife didn't because I hadn't met her, so in a way she was learning some things about me when she read it.

It's not exactly light summer reading for them.
Ya know, in some ways I feel like maybe it's a little easier for them to read because they know the guy they are reading about isn't really their son, he's a different person with all the drugs. & My wife, she didn't know that Jason. She didn't know the guy who existed before, or during, only the one after the drugs. So when she would read parts of this book it was difficult for her, but the more she got to learn about me in that period, she knows better, that's not me.

But it was, and recently; and you're not exactly an old man.
Yeah, but I had to talk about the drugs, and talk about the misery, and talk about the suicide thoughts where I wasn't leaving it to chance with the amount of pills I take, but by putting a hole through the back of my head.

And this can help people?
Well, there's not too many addicts running out to buy books, but what about family members? If there are people that know somebody that has gone through this or is going through this—I never give advice, like when someone comes to me and asks what should I do, everything is different—but if you can see some similarities in my life somewhere in yours or someone else's, you know, hell yeah, you or someone needs help, but there's a lot of different ways to do that.

Was it weird, going back and accessing those memories?
Well, I hurts, because you sort of feel for the first time what you were doing to your family. I'm writing as Jason the reformed guy, but it feels like I'm still Jason the drugged-out scumbag. I also feel the selfishness of the entire addiction and then I think of the suicide attempts and I get angry at that: it's the most selfish thing in the world, because you remove yourself, and everyone else is left to pick up the pieces.

How did football fit into this?
You know, I never thought I would become this person, but the feel of the rush, and the experience of gameday, you do look for something to fill that void to a degree, but the bottom line is this with drugs and addicts: it's okay to say with drugs, that you liked the way they make you feel. They feel good! That was a reason!

But you started on pain killers, and that comes from real pain.
The first ten times I did any pain pills, I was having them handed to my by a doctor. By the time you're in college, you're used to the idea that doctors are doing what's best for you. When you get to pro football, they still care, but they are also preserving that chance that you can get out on the field, first and foremost.

Do the rituals of football mimic the rituals of drug use?
To a degree. Everything is planned, and it's done with a purpose, and that's to be on top, whether it's the way you put on your shoes, or the way you were preparing a rock of cocaine. And, I felt like I was good at doing drugs. I'd actually think, why should I buy a pre-cooked rock of cocaine when I can do it better? It was almost like, in a weird way, that I was doing it right. Not morally, obviously, but I was.

There's an invincible-factor for a lot of athletes. Were you that way, and did that factor into the drugs, and the suicide?
Definitely. There was a part of me that when I was injured in Carolina, when it was over, that said "I'm Jason Peter, I can come back." I think when that happened, there was a feeling for the first time like I didn't have total control. With the drugs, right until they make you out of control, you are essentially running your body.

There's also some great football talk in here. There's the time you guys put a bounty on Peyton Manning, which, in the midst of this book, seems hysterical, and maybe a little sacred.
Would I have commented on in it college, that we took our per diem and essentially put it on quarterbacks heads, no.

But a bounty—even in retrospect, that's intense. Of course, it's also a little like Slap Shot.
This was something that gave a little sneak peek into the way it was. It wasn't so much about hurting a guy—certainly we put the money in a pool, and certainly we wanted to be the first guy to the QB—but it was about the closeness, and about how tight we were as a group, especially Grant (Wistrom) and I. We were like brothers. … All the black shirts were.

And the NFL wasn't the same.
I don't want to blame the NFL, per se, but it wasn't what I expected, and it was hard. Guys there go home to their wife and kids—and I would too, today—but at the time, I was still of the belief in football as brotherhood, and this was all business.

It also sounds like you had a yearning for the "god" status in Lincoln; did you?
Maybe. We went 49-2, and the day you're on that campus, you're at once a part of a family. But as a part of that football team, were something more. People looked at you differently. You felt like you walked on water. When you get treated like that long enough, you start to believe in a way, that it's normal.

And from that, to Carolina, to a junky?
By the time I was done in Carolina, and I was into drugs over my head, you almost see yourself as a hero in a different light, like the title. You feel like you're a Hero to the Underground, like you've staked out a new turf and you dominate it. Whether it was New York or LA, I wanted to feel the way I did back in Lincoln, and even though football had become drugs, I was still king of the castle.


Jason Peter lives with his wife in Lincoln, Nebraska where he co-hosts a sports radio show.

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