Former Husker's book chronicles highs, lows
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BY KEN HAMBLETON / Lincoln Journal Star
All the intentions were good.
Jason Peter was about to check into a rehab program ... again.
He was late. The gates were locked. He screamed. He cursed. He threatened.
He gave up, went back to his $600-a-night hotel room, and mixed cocaine with bicarbonate of soda.
To keep the high going, he cut a line of heroin, swallowed some Xanax and flicked on a porn channel.
Three days later, hotel security guards woke him.
The crazy, frenetic roller coaster of drugs had him ... again.
“There is a way out,” Peter said. “AA didn’t work for me. The counseling, the telling stories and hearing stories about how messed up they were and how messed up I was. I tried it over and over. I could never see the end of the tunnel. Feeling down. Feeling bad about yourself didn’t help me.”
Peter did find a way out. The 6-foot-5, 235-pound former Husker defensive tackle survived a radical drug treatment program. He talked about his survival on “Real Sports” on HBO, on the “Jim Rome Show” and in a January 2006 story in the Journal Star.
He’s back in Nebraska and part of the daily sports talk show “The Spread” on ESPN 1480 in the afternoons.
Peter hits sports as hard as he hit opponents during his All-America run helping Nebraska win three national football titles. He plays a little golf and plays with his dogs. He’s married to Sarah.
He’s alive.
His memoir, “Hero of the Underground,” takes you inside the white helmet with the red “N,” puts you in the locker room and the defensive huddles during the 1998 Orange Bowl.
Peter, along with older brother Christian and best friend Grant Wistrom, forged a legacy of Blackshirt defense that has never been, or ever will be, copied.
His career as the top draft pick of the Carolina Panthers didn’t work out as well, however.
Injuries, and access to painkillers — 80 oxycodone a day — gave Peter the excuse he needed to start the race to becoming as intense a junkie as he was a defensive monster on the football field.
Hookers and highs. Peter’s book shows the slide into the darkest episode of his life on greased rails. A cross-country flight on a private plane to enroll in a rehab clinic, with plenty of coke and heroin and two hookers on board, shows the absolute bottom of the ultimate high.
More drugs, the paranoia and the new highs take the reader on a page-flipping frenzy that only slows for suicide attempts, lies to family members and feeble efforts at various rehab clinics.
“No, this isn’t one for the little Huskers,” Peter said. “It’s honest. My passion was football. I replaced that with a passion for getting high. The rehab places kept saying I had to find my passion, or like with the drugs, the passion will find you.”
Peter said he purposely is the only character of import in the book.
“I wanted to be honest, truthful and explain that this can happen,” he said. “And now, the more time I can put between myself and the life I was living in the book, the easier it is to live. I’d be lying if I said I don’t remember the feelings of euphoria and the feelings that were so miserable I wanted to kill myself.
“Maybe it will help somebody.”
Reach Ken Hambleton at 473-7313 or khambleton@journalstar.com.
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