Five years after the start of his pro career, ex-Cornhusker Jason Peter was down to about 225 pounds, alone and paranoid in his Manhattan apartment, waiting for dealers to bring the next high. Today, he's sober and ready to live again.

BY KEN HAMBLETON | Lincoln Journal Star

They called their book on Nebraska’s 1997 national championship football season “Heart and Soul.”

Teammates, roommates, brothers in almost every sense of the word, Jason Peter and Grant Wistrom are as close as any two people can be despite the distance from Seattle to Los Angeles.

They were the keys to winning 49 of 51 games over four seasons at Nebraska.

Nebraska defensive coordinator Charlie McBride said Wistrom was the best defensive end he ever coached and that includes Trev Alberts, Broderick Thomas and Jared Tomich. He said Peter was among the best defensive tackles he ever coached and that list included Neil Smith and John Parrella.

They were such hot draft prospects many scouts were talking about them turning pro after their junior season.

“Jason said he’d kill me if I went to the pros early,” Wistrom said. “I told him the same thing.”

Wistrom and Peter were first-round NFL Draft picks in spring 1998, and they both became starters, Wistrom with the St. Louis Rams, Peter,  a 6-foot-5, 285-pound defensive tackle with the Carolina Panthers. 

Five years into Wistrom’s career, he signed with Seattle for $14 million and has helped the Seahawks to the playoffs the past two seasons.

Five years after the start of his pro career, Peter was down to about 225 pounds, alone and paranoid in his Manhattan apartment, waiting for dealers to bring the next high.

Prescripton for disaster

 

Three national championship rings, the adulation of Husker Nation, a $7.4 million signing bonus and friendships forged during five years at Nebraska were not enough.

“Nothing made me feel as good as when I was high,” Peter said. “Nothing mattered but getting that feeling that Vicodin could give me. I was married to the drugs.”

He started with a couple of pain pills for chronic back pain when he was at Nebraska. When he got to the NFL, he had more injuries, more pain, more surgeries, more drugs.

By the time team doctors called an end to his career at the end of the 2001 season because of spinal injuries, Peter was working his way up to 80 Vicodin a day.

Within two years, he had graduated to crack cocaine, then heroin.

“I had nothing to do and I had a bank account,” he said. “I was still dealing with a lot of physical pain and I could still get all the drugs I wanted.”

The combination was a prescription for disaster.

“I’d get up and take 20 Vicodin, wait a little bit and take some more, then some more and by the end of the day I had put down about 80 of the pills,” Peter said. “I liked the way they made me feel.”

Eventually, the Vicodin wasn’t enough.

“I was in a fog but I couldn’t get that feeling that pills gave me any more. I started getting pains where I never had pain before. I’d hit my finger on something and it hurt like I broke it. I was creating pain so I’d take more pain pills.”

With crack cocaine, he would stay up four and five days, then sleep for 24 hours or more.

“That started to wear off, so I switched to heroin. I’d get up and get high. I never did anything. I was such a good customer, the dealers were glad to deliver the drugs right to me.”

Wistrom tried to connect with his best friend.

“He was going through a hard time and I knew he was struggling with some things, but I didn’t know the extent that he was hurting himself. I kept trying to reach out but I knew that when he was ready to join in society, I wanted to be there to welcome him back.”

Peter cut himself off from family, too. Just 40 minutes from his parents’ home in New Jersey, even closer to his two brothers in suburban New York City, he couldn’t find the time or the desire to visit.

“I was pathetic but I didn’t care because I was high all the time.”

He was also afraid.

“I knew more dealers than friends. I had used my athletic ability more than once to run away from the cops. I’m talking about spending a couple of days on the run in the streets in New York City. I’m tough, but I’m not prison tough.”

Pain became too much

 

When he was at Nebraska, Jason Peter was a leader who stayed out of trouble.

Then came the injuries in the NFL — the tingling from his neck to his fingers that lasted all week, the burning in his shoulders and the steady throb in his back.

At parties with Carolina fans, he said, he’d trade local doctors and dentists autographed jerseys or helmets for prescriptions for Vicodin.

“I knew more dentists in the Charlotte area, and my teeth weren’t all that clean,” he said.

The NFL tested for marijuana, steroids and street drugs, but not Vicodin and such related drugs as OxyContin, Lorcet and Percodan.

“The NFL gets all over the alcohol arrests,” said Peter, who was charged with drunken driving in 1999. “They test you six times a month and make you go to counseling. But the teams wanted you on the field and if Vicodin could get you off the bench, then they didn’t mind.”

In 2001, Peter joked with a writer from The Herald in Rock Hill, S.C., that he didn’t know he had torn ligaments in the arch of his left foot until he stopped taking pain medication for his neck. 

In the NFL, Peter said he didn’t hang out with former Huskers and fellow Panthers teammates Mike Rucker and Mike Minter.

“The NFL isn’t like that. They did their thing after practice and I did my thing. We’d get together now and then, but they had their families.

“The NFL was our job, our business and we didn’t mix much after work. It was nothing at all like college.”

Then he faced the universal challenge of life after football.

“All the guys I’ve talked to miss it and there is no substitute for the hitting, the absolute physical nature of football in college and in the pros,” said Brenden Stai, who played for the Huskers before a nine-year pro career. “You can build a family, watch your children grow, learn a business, but there is nothing like playing the game.”

Christian always there

Christian and Jason Peter were roommates in college and played side-by-side on the greatest defense in Nebraska history in 1995.

When Christian finished his career at Nebraska, Jason took his No. 55 jersey as a tribute.

They were always close, and after Jason’s career ended Christian knew his brother was in trouble.

“He had to make the decision to get control, to live a real life,” said Christian, who now sells insurance in New Jersey. “We never left him. We all were always there. Nobody gave up. We all tried talking and never stopped.

“But you tell me, how many drug addicts listen to anybody about anything. The lies. The stories. The excuses. He finally made the choice to live a life.”

Making a choice

Jason Peter fell so far into depression and despair that 18 months ago, he was ready to kill himself.

“I was staying at my folks’ house in Jersey while they were in Europe,” he said. “I was getting high and I was on my knees, ready to put a bullet in my head. Drugs didn’t matter anymore. I was done with everything.

“My Aunt Lee pulled into the driveway and I tried to straighten up. She could see I was a mess.”

Lee Peter would spend the next four days with her nephew.

“We all knew Jason was in trouble with drugs,” she said. “His brothers were convinced that if he continued on the path he was on, he would not be around much longer. I went inside and started talking. I didn’t stop talking and praying for four days.

“I talked about all the gifts he had — a passion for football that he could redirect, a compassion for other people, a family that loved him and needed him, all the talents that made him special. If he could use that strength and passion to help himself, he could overcome this.”

Her nephew checked into the Wiseman Clinic rehab center in the Los Angeles area.

“(They) put me on morphine to get me off the heroin. Then, you try to wean off the morphine. It didn’t work. I went through all the withdrawal systems even though I was unconscious and I was in more pain than ever.”

When he asked for help for the pain, he recalled, a doctor said, “He’s an NFL player, he can suck it up.”

He stayed in the clinic for less than two weeks, and, 30 minutes after checking out, he was high again.

“I had money, I had a passport and I thought, just take off somewhere. I’d get high and die and nobody would bother me.

“But I had run into a woman who worked at a rehabilitation place and said they could do better for me.”

He chose to try again and checked into the Beau Monde Program in Newport Beach, Calif.

“I went through the detox and basically I slept for more than a week,” Peter said. “When the detox was completed, they said it was time to get to work.

“It was tougher than any football training camp I ever went through,” he said. “I did want a life. I did want to stay clear.”

Three months passed, then six, then nine.

“I was getting along and I was closing in on a year without getting high,” he said. “It’s not all that simple. I still go day to day. I know I could get high any time I wanted. I would make excuses about pain. But I thought I had a chance to live a life and that drives me even today.”

Today, he has a life coach to plan out his physical therapy and drug rehab. He knows he can’t do it alone.

“I know that it’s not that far from getting back into drugs and doing myself in. I know if I go back to drugs I’ll die.”

Two months into the Beau Monde program, Peter stunned old friends and fans during an interview with “Real Sports” on HBO. 

“I needed drugs more than anything else,” he said during the show. “I tried to kill myself one time with 60 or 70 Vicodin and 20 Ambien. I wrote a letter, saying goodbye. I couldn’t stop and I thought that was the only way out. But the pills didn’t kill me. I just slept for a long time.”

The once-husky defensive lineman looked scared and confused during the show.

“He was so much smaller,” said Mike Rucker. “I knew he was going through a lot. But I was surprised.”

Peter explained the weight loss.   

“You don’t worry much about food when you’re high.”

Day-by-day struggle

During a recent visit to the Rumson, N.J., home of his parents, Hubert and Mary, Jason Peter spent time with nieces Olivia and Juliette.

“Daddy can’t compete with Uncle Jason,” Christian Peter said with a chuckle. “This is a life he couldn’t live 17 months ago. Jason was talking about getting out on the ice. We always loved to play hockey. We were actually pretty good, but it’s been so long.”

These days, Jason Peter’s recovery is a full-time job — physical therapy on his neck and back seven days a week and rehabilitation for the drug addiction.

“I get through today. Tomorrow, I’ll get through that day. I feel like if I put one quarter of the effort into rehab that I put into getting drugs and getting high, I can make it.”

As part of his return to life, as he calls it, Peter worked as a volunteer coach with the Edison High Chargers football team in Huntington Beach, Calif., this fall.

“I was trying to teach the things coaches taught me. I was trying to teach the things I learned from playing. I tried to coach the fundamentals.”

He helped lead the Chargers to a 10-2 season and into the state playoffs.

“It was great but I don’t know how much longer I can afford to be a volunteer coach. I went through so much money so fast when I was on the drugs. I’ll have to get a job some day.”

Coaching could be in the future.

“The kids really bought into Jason,” said Dave White, Edison football coach. “He was great with the kids and taught them a lot of things you can only know from experience.

“He was also up front with his past with drugs and I have always been a believer in second chances. Jason was so intense, so fiery and so interesting, we’d love to have him back any time. I know the kids do.”

His Husker teammates already have taken him back.

In July, Jason and Christian Peter and more than 30 other former teammates met for Wistrom’s annual charity golf tournament at Quarry Oaks Golf Course near Ashland.

“It was like nothing had happened and we were back together talking about anything we wanted and playing some really bad golf,” Jason Peter said. “Nobody looked down or looked away from me. That’s Nebraska. Nobody was going to judge me or anybody else.”

Reach Ken Hambleton at 473-7313 or khambleton@journalstar.com

The Peter brothers

Jason Peter

Hometown: Locust, N.J.

 

School: Milford Academy, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Football career: Defensive tackle at Nebraska, 1994-97; redshirted in 1993. 1997 All-American. 1997 finalist for Outland Trophy and Bronko Nagurski Defensive Player of the Year award. First-round draft pick, Carolina Panthers, 1998. Played for Panthers until end of 2001 season.

Christian Peter

Hometown: Locust, N.J.

School: Middletown South High, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Football career: Defensive tackle at Nebraska, 1993-95. 1995 honorable mention All-American. 1995 All Conference. Drafted by New England Patriots 1996. Dropped by Patriots in wake of publicity about misdemeanor convictions for assault and charges of sexual assault. Played for New York Giants, 1997-2000, Indianapolis Colts, 2001, Chicago Bears, 2002.

Hard football facts

Statistics show 26 percent of former NFL players experience severe financial problems after their careers end.

The injury rate for NFL players is 100 percent.

The average NFL career is 3.2 years, meaning most players have about 40 more years of life without football.