Warning: The following article contains language which might be unsuitable for young readers. Prior to this article being written, I seeked approval from a Desk Editor at Bleacher Report. In the event of a curse word appearing in my article, I have placed an asterisk (not like the one that Barry Bonds should be given, but an asterisk next to any vowels.)
Imagine waking up tomorrow morning knowing that a book was being published about your darkest secrets being exposed to millions of potential readers. What would someone think of you if they really got to know the real you?
What are you hiding from people? Jason Peter “the self-proclaimed, the beast that society seems to worship- the football warrior, the All-American, the baddest motherf*cker in God’s own universe,” hides nothing in his 289 pages of Hero of the Underground.
When you open up to the first page and your eyes see this, “I wasn’t afraid of death. How could I be? I lived under death’s shadow very day.When you swallow 60 Vicodin, 20 sleeping pills, drink a bottle of vodka, and still survive, a certain sense of invulnerability stays with you.” You know you’re not reading your average book. As you’ll learn is nothing average about Jason Peter!
I read his book twice once in November and I just finished his book a few days ago. Each time I read his book I was mad that I finished. I kept looking at the blank pages thinking, “I want more, this book should never end.”
Why did I want more? Because I never read anything like this before. I grew up in a sheltered area in a town called Sparta, NJ, where my neighbors drove nice cars and lived in nice houses.
One of my neighbors (ok he lived three miles down the road) was Brad Pitt at one point. Jason grew up an hour and a half away from me in Middletown, NJ located on the New Jersey Shore (it is not called the ocean, it’s the Jersey Shore, get it right people) where he was the middle child of three brothers.
All three of his brothers received football scholarships to prestige colleges Nebraska and Notre Dame. However, a swimming accident left Jason’s younger brother Damien paralyzed, causing an end to what would have been a promising football career for Damien at Notre Dame.
Jason followed his older brother Christian to play football at the University of Nebraska. Christian and Jason had the opportunity to be coached by one of the greatest college football coaches of all-time, Tom Osborne. It wouldn’t surprise me one day if the state of Nebraska is named Osborne one day.
During Peter’s stay in Nebraska he led Nebraska to three National Championships in a span of four years, including beating future NFL Hall of Famer Peyton Manning and the Tennessee Volunteers, 42-17.
After winning the National Championship, Jason prepared for the upcoming NFL Draft where he was projected to be a top 10 draft pick according to the so called “experts.”
With the 14th pick in the 1998 NFL Draft, The Carolina Panthers selected Jason Peter. Jason expressed utter disappointment when he fell out of the top 10. However, this motivated Jason to show the other 13 teams that they missed out on him.
Jason had a rough time adjusting to his new lifestyle in Charlotte. He barely attended training camp because his agent was having problems negotiating a contract with the Panthers organization. Peter’s contract would be signed five days before the start of the regular season.
One thing that Jason would learn over the course of his brief NFL career was how to bribe doctors into giving anything he wanted in exchange Peter’s would return the favor of giving the doctor some signed NFL memorabilia. It didn’t matter if he asked for Oxycontin, Dilaudid, Vicodin, or Xanax, whatever he wanted, he got.
In December of 1998, Jason had his first of several surgeries of his NFL career. When he woke up from surgery, he was in more pain than when he walked in front door of the hospital.
He immediately screamed for a nurse where he was given morphine to tolerance the pain. When he left the hospital he was given a bottle of Vicodin which become his new best friend in the span of months.
Two months later, he was back in the surgery room. This time he needed work on his left shoulder. This surgery prevented him from any physical training until the end of April which set him back in the Panther organization since his teammates were hitting the weight room weeks after the season ended.
The inability to perform his job started to depress him where the only thing that kept him from going insane was the painkillers.
While Jason was rehabbing from his surgeries, the press would eat him up to the point that they questioned his dedication to the Carolina Panthers organization.
In March of 1999, Peter’s had his first run in with the law after getting arrested for DUI after leaving a club around three o’clock in the morning. His DUI arrest was be published in newspapers, where his already less-than-stellar name would hurt his image once again.
The phrase, “Jason, I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to operate,” became a regular conversation with him and doctors. After an injury against the New Orleans Saints his head coach George Seifert told him it was time for him to call it a career.
Prior to his retirement in 2000, Jason was taking over 60 Vicodin’s a day compared to the recommended take one or two every four hours (although you should consult your doctor to how much Vicodin you should take).
Peter quickly moved out of Charlotte after his NFL career folded. He didn’t take the news well, one day while driving on the Jersey Turnpike a pile of questions started circling in his head as he drove up to a tollbooth.
He wanted to get on the E-Z Pass lane, when he asked himself, “What the f*ck am I doing?” Peter was in no rush to get anywhere because he decided by tomorrow morning he’d be dead. The thoughts of suicide often haunted his dreams.
After moving out of Charlotte he ended up renting an apartment in New York City where he started to experiment with cocaine.
If Jason wasn’t high on drugs in his apartment, you could find him at the hottest nightclub in the city with a gorgeous actress by his side. He’d bring home any girl to his apartment to continue snorting cocaine while having meaningless sex.
In order to escape the cocaine and club scene Jason would go to his parent’s house almost every weekend.
However, everything would be waiting for him when he got back to the city that never sleeps.
When Jason returned home he had hundreds of pills scattered around his apartment and he knew where each and every pill was. The only thing that he looked forward to was getting high, it was the only thing he thought about to the point where he was paranoid about them.
“Sometimes I would have these crazy fantasies of what would happen in the case of a war or a natural disaster. What if a rogue state nuked the United States? What would happen to me? Where would I get my tablets from then?
"Yeah, my main concern in the event of a nuclear attack was “Will I still be able to get my drugs? You should try it sometime. If you think that sounds funny, or weird, you just try it.
"The first time you ever run low on those motherfucking tablets, the blood turns to ice water in your veins, then the cramps and the hives and the shitting, and finally you brain turns into a lump of white hot shrapnel. F*ck. A nuclear warhead couldn’t scare me. I knew what real fear was.”
It sounds funny at first, but until you realize that he’s isn’t trying to be funny, the humor comes to a close. One day while he was at his parents’ house he burned through his pills too quickly and ran out.
In a panic, he ripped apart his parents’ house searching for his father’s Vicodin. He was no longer a professional athlete, instead he was a professional junkie.
“Along with the painkillers, I was snorting cocaine at epic levels. That was the only thing that got me out of the house and into the nightclubs so I could try to drink and f*ck the misery out of myself.
"The next morning, when I’d wake up in a ménage of coke-smeared mirrors and nude, snoring strippers, I would truly know the meaning of the word “misery.”
Never in Peter’s wildest dreams did he think that this was the way his life was going to be in his mid to late 20’s. One day when it was at his parent’s house he decided to attempt suicide figuring he needed to put an end to his misery.
“I had already taken thirty Vicodin and was halfway down on a bottle of Grey Goose. I was not scared.
"Taking one last look at the place, the home I grew up in, the home I had spent many glorious, carefree summers in, I emptied out the bottle of painkillers and shoved them, five at a time, into my mouth, knocking them back with great gulps from the bottle of vodka.
"I figured that an additional 30 Vicodin and 20 Ambien I had on me should do the trick. When I swallowed everything, I took another good solid hit from the booze, killing it. My guts gurgled and rumbled, ominously.”
Jason Peter would not die.
He couldn’t believe how he survived his own suicide attempt, it was later explained by doctors how his body had built up a heavy drug tolerance where the average person would have died.
However, Jason Peter isn’t your average person.
What I’m about to say next is something that I don’t want you try but to just listen to what Jason just did. I bet if you went home put numerous amounts of painkillers in your mouth while chugging a bottle of Grey Goose vodka, with 30 Vicodin and 20 Ambien that you wouldn’t live to see the next day.
When Jason got up he realized that he was shocked to find out he was still alive, yet he never felt so miserable in his life.
Jason just attempted suicide, reality starts to shine in a little bit. He wonders maybe this is the day that his life would turnaround for the better. With tears in his eyes he called his older brother Christian and told him what happened.
When Christian rushed over to find Jason all they could do was hold each other in their arms. Jason never thought he’d never be able to touch his older brother again. They tried to calm one another down but when someone overcomes surviving their own death it’s almost impossible to calm somebody down.
Jason decided that it was time to enter rehab. One of his ex-girlfriends told him a long time ago about Sierra Tucson a rehab center located in Tucson, AZ that saved her life. His younger brother Damien made the call and that evening they were both on a plane to Tucson.
It was recommended that Jason should continue using the pills until he showed up at Sierra Tucson. Jason threw the pills in his mouth like candy on the plane while drinking alcohol like he was drinking bottled water. He ended up spending a lot of time in the bathroom on the airplane throwing up and sh*tting viciously.
A stewardess became worried about his condition. Damien alerted the stewardess saying his brother is terrified of flying and somehow the stewardess decided to buy it and told him to not worry saying that they are in great hands.
Meanwhile Jason’s hands were busy holding onto the toilet as he continued to throw up whatever came out of his body.
Once they finally got off the plane at Tucson International Airport they had a good 50 minute drive until they arrived at Sierra Tucson.
Jason had no idea what to expect when he checked into Sierra Tucson. Little did he know that he was in for a tough time. He was put in a room with two people, one who was detoxing from a lifetime of alcohol abuse and this other guy that Jason had no idea what his problem was but it didn’t sound good.
Jason then explains the other guy in the room by the name who went by the name Michael.
“Of course, when we talk about my roommates, we have to mention Mike. Mike wasn’t a junkie. Mike was technically medical staff, although whether he had a PhD or a GED, I don’t know. Mike looked like the world’s most pissed-off bouncer.
"He was paid to sit in a chair in the corner of the room to make sure that nobody died. Every so often, if Stan, Enrique, or I fell silent for too long, he’d yell over, 'You still with me, boys?'"
To make a long story short about Peter’s rehab stint in Sierra Tucson, didn’t work out for him. The only thing that Sierra Tucson did for him was diagnose him with more illnesses.
In a sick twisted humor, Peter’s elaborated about one of his meetings with his shrink. “I accidentally talked myself into being diagnosed with another condition: sex addiction. Yes, folks, I was not only was a junkie and a f*ckup, now I was an anorexic nymphomaniac, too.”
I never met a 245 pound anorexic person in my life and probably never will, hopefully. During his visit in Sierra Tucson he attended meeting for sex addicts where he learned about this one person who found it impossible to go through a day at his job without sneaking off into the bathroom to masturbate six or seven times a day.
After attending these meetings, Jason knew he wasn’t getting the right treatment and checked out against medical advice.
Throughout this book, I learned just how much Jason’s family cared about him. Despite the numerous times that he broke his families hearts, including giving a mother a heart attack (which will be discussed later on), his family never gave up on him.
Jason knew he was hurting his family and he tried his best to listen to his family because it broke his heart knowing what he was putting them through. When his brothers and a childhood friend made an unexpected visit to his apartment one day, Jason took off running.
However, later on Jason returned to his apartment to discover his brothers and friend were still there.
They weren’t going to leave until they talked to him.
His brothers wanted Jason to speak counseling. They tried arraigning an appointment with his brother’s shrink Dr. Deptford. In what might be the funniest line in the entire book we learned that Dr. Deptford was booked solid.
Let me show you what why I laughed when Jason found out he couldn’t talk to Dr. Deptford right away. “Business must have been good, I thought. There’s no shortage of crazy people in New Jersey.”
For the first time I have to agree with Jason, having lived in New Jersey for almost my entire life I must say the craziest people I have ever encountered were from New Jersey, Jason Peter being one of them.
Dr. Deptford finally met with Jason where he told Jason straight up that he needed to go back to rehab. I probably could have told him that and I only have an Associate’s Degree as of today.
Jason would head off to another rehab center this time located in Pennsylvania, home of the worst drivers in the United States but that’s a different story. Jason’s rehab center was about two hours and forty-five minutes away from his parent’s house although they never came to visit.
How could they visit, he barely stayed there.
One thing that Jason learned about checking into rehab centers is that they will search looking for any type of drugs. Jason learned this from Sierra Tucson so he became sneaky when he taped twenty Vicodin on the tongue of his left shoe and ten Ambien on the tongue of his right shoe.
The main difference between Sierra Tucson and Marworth was how strict Marworth was. Jason was told that he was not able to talk with the opposite sex and if he did (or got caught) he would be asked to leave.
They did this because they believe if a female can support a drug habit without a man to help her that now isn’t the time for a man to help her.
It makes sense in a way but I would go crazy I can’t go a day without talking to a female. But I do understand the circumstances and what Marworth was trying to accomplish.
I’m not going to talk about Marworth that much since he only stayed there for five days. However, some of the funniest stories in the book came from his stay at Marworth.
In fact, one of my favorite moments in the book comes when Jason is at a meeting where he is exposed to an alcoholic to the point where’d he drink mouthwash to clear up his delirium tremens whenever the liquor store closed.
Later on in the day when Jason returned to his room he found out he was getting a roommate. And who was that roommate going to be?
The man who drank mouthwash!
Jason decided he wasn’t going to put up with this guy and he packed up and got the hell out of Pennsylvania to head back to city that never sleeps. It turns out Jason wouldn’t sleep much either. One night Jason was at a party when he received a phone call from somebody that he met at Sierra Tucson telling him about a rehab center in Utah.
Jason’s friend convinced him to come out just like any male friend would do, by telling him there were gorgeous females working there (even if they were Mormon).
The next day Jason was on a plane to Utah which happened to be the same weekend of the Sundance film festival. Jason ended up sitting next to director Spike Lee who became furious with Jason during the flight. Jason’s nose was bothering him due to the cocaine usage so during the entire flight Spike kept hearing Jason huffing and puffing.
I could only imagine what was going through Spike’s head but he kept silent because let’s be honest, Jason could have put Spike in a body bag if the two got in an altercation.
Jason actually had a successful stay at Cirque Lodge for the most part. Like any straight male, he enjoyed the company of the beautiful woman while he tried to get his drug habit under control. What Jason admired about this place was how they managed him during his stay.
What made Cirque Lodge stand out from Marworth and Sierra Tucson was that they weren’t there to diagnose him instead their focus was to keep him off drugs while teaching him to start a new life.
However, the one bad thing about drug rehab is that you are introduced to others with similar problems as yourself. Jason would encounter people who told him about how they got high. One person told him that there was no better feeling than coke and smack (heroin) together.
Jason completed his fifty days at Cirque Lodge and believed that he would be able to conquer his demons. He had his car shipped over to the Lodge where he would do a road trip to Los Angeles, CA to visit a friend he met during his stay at Sierra Tucson.
It seemed Los Angeles was the ideal place for him and his friend would be the perfect connection for him since Jason wanted to get into acting.
Jason’s friend was David Rosenberg whose family comes from a well-respected movie-making family in Hollywood. In exchange for getting Jason some auditions, Jason would be David’s personal trainer so he could get rid of his beer gut.
However, before any of this happened Jason would have to get there first. Jason was looking at a nine hour and forty minute drive from Sundance, Utah to Los Angeles, California that would be a day’s drive, or so he thought.
After five hours into his journey his phone went off. This time it was a former friend of his from the NFL asking him where he was at. Jason told him he was in route to California while his friend was in Las Vegas urging him to stop by.
The trip to Los Angeles would be put on hold since Jason was going to Sin City, the perfect place to go after exiting a rehab program!
Eight hours after exiting Cirque Lodge Jason was sitting in his hotel room with two eight-balls of cocaine staring back at him. The entire night in Vegas flew by thanks to the cocaine and alcohol.
Jason would hit up the casinos, strip clubs and night clubs while snorting lines of cocaine with siliconed dancers in the VIP section. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t what Cirque Lodge wanted him to do after exiting rehab although Jason never really did tell what he was supposed to do after leaving the Lodge but I am only speculating.
I’m probably right since the very next morning he left Vegas in disgust. The angrier he was the faster he drove as he made it to Los Angeles in record time. He needed to talk to David since he thought he had it together. However, after reading Jason’s book I wonder if anyone living in Los Angeles has it together.
Jason arrived at David’s house located in Bel Air while the two talked about their stay at Sierra Tucson. This is when David turned out of character when he told Jason that he has a friend who has some killer blow (cocaine).
Everything that he learned from Cirque Lodge was officially out the window since within the hour both David and Jason were cutting out lines of cocaine while doing some heavy duty drinking.
Los Angeles seemed almost as welcoming as Las Vegas was to him the night before.
However, driving out to Los Angeles turned out to be one of the worst ideas he ever made. David introduced Jason to his friend/drug connection. Zora, from the description that Jason gives us, could have starred in the 2004 release of the movie The Stepford Wives.
Zora introduced Jason to the most dangerous drug in the world, Crystal Meth. What made matters worse was the people that were hanging out with Zora and Jason. One time while Jason was over Zora’s house he was smoking Crystal Meth was an on-call EMT doctor.
This is why I stated earlier if anyone had Los Angeles had their stuff together. If anyone that is reading this lives in Los Angeles and are taken to a hospital my ambulance do me a favor ask if anyone by the name of Mickey is in the ambulance with you.
Mickey was hanging out with Jason for an hour when his beeper went off and he sprung into action barking instructions to the person on the other side of his cell phone, he would be reporting to a bloody freeway pileup while high on crystal meth, unbelievable. You really can’t make this stuff up.
During his stay in Los Angeles, Jason would call home to check up with his family he’d continue to tell his rehearsed lies saying that things were going really well. Jason truly was becoming a professional liar, too bad that doesn’t make any income because he would have made a killing off that.
Despite the fact that he was wasting away at life, Jason knew he was a wreck. After hanging out with this one girl who reminded him of past relationships, the girl pointed out that they were bad for each other or in her own words, they were poison for another.
The poison hadn’t leaked into Jason’s head just yet as he was wise enough to understand he needed help, he needed to go home and confront his family for the first time in months.
When Jason returned home he was physically and mentally drained from his stay in Los Angeles. His mother knew that his stay in Los Angeles was nothing but lies. As his addiction was not only a poison to himself but to his family as well.
His mother looked like she could have had a mental breakdown at any moment while his father continued to live in misery.
Jason decided to head back to Cirque Lodge under strict rules thanks to his new counselor. He wasn’t able to have a car, he had a rigid and uncompromising schedule. Jason knew this wasn’t going to work out from the get go just because his counselor was female.
Jason felt that he couldn’t fully speak his mind to her, or expect her to understand his problems.
His second stay at Cirque Lodge lasted for forty-five days.
Jason decided to form his own way of recovery compared to the 12-step programs that numerous rehab centers attempt on their patients. Jason’s six step program was: no cocaine before 5:00, no cocaine after midnight, attend the gym regularly, no more pain pills, keep tight with Katrina (a girl he met at Marworth), keep your parents happy.
You could probably guess who well his six step program worked. The first step that went out the door was the pain killers. Jason explains that the pills were hard to get off, and he only did the pills on the days that he needed a break from cocaine.
When you’re a drug addict and you’re used to being on drugs that when you’re not them it makes the minutes and hours of the day an eternity. Jason would slowly realize his method was a hoax as he battled to get through the day staying clean.
If Jason wasn’t seeing Katrina during the weekend, he would freebase, a drug term for when the drugs are absorbed into the lungs where it reaches the brain in about five seconds.
The rush becomes more intense compared to sniffing the cocaine. However, the effects don’t last as long. It’s amazing what you can learn when you pick up a book and read sometimes.
Jason’s relationship with Katrina was short lived after Jason thought it would be a funny idea to show up to an Alcohol Anonymous New Years Eve Party high on cocaine. He figured it would be funny instead it would be anything but funny, more like humiliating.
It wouldn’t take long for Jason to find himself a new girl it was easier than shooting fish in a barrel. However, these girls weren’t the type of girls that you would want to bring home to your parents.
Jason met a girl named Diane at a strip club and he was immediately drawn to her looks. You know looks don’t always mean everything from what I’m told. However, when all you want is a quick screw, finding a girl at a rundown strip club might be your best option.
Diane would be a relief to Jason since he no longer had to cover up his drug habit anymore since Diane joined in on the drug activities. After the strip club would close it was common for Jason to bring the party back to his place where at any time there would be four strippers in his bedroom.
However, they were as visible as ghosts because the only eyes he would lay on were Diane’s.
So much for the quick screw, Diane would last for about a year. When the party ended and the other dancers went to wherever home was for them, Diane stayed with Jason.
When describing Diane, Jason said, “That f*cking body of hers, it was crazy making. She was the kind of woman who could drive a guy to murder or the creation of great f*cking symphonies.
"After a few days of us hanging out in my apartment, getting high, talking about everything and anything, I thought, 'This chick is gonna be the f*cking death of me.' Honestly, I didn’t care.”
So once again Jason wasn’t worried of death because he apparently had everything he wanted with Diane. She had the luxury of reintroducing him to smoking heroin. Jason tried this once when he was living in Charlotte but had a bad experience with heroin after spending the night throwing it up.
After staying up for 24 hours, doing speed and crack he thought why the hell not try some heroin? This is kind of hysterical (in an awkward way) because earlier in the book, Jason thought crack without heroin just doesn’t make any sense, thinking it was a waste of time.
Diane pretty much lived at Jason’s apartment to the point where it was debatable as to questioning who had the worse drug habit Diane or Jason. Towards the end of this relationship I would have to say Diane by a long shot.
During this span, the only thing she wanted was to have sex with Jason and do drugs. However, the sex would die off after a while because neither had the physical energy to have sex. The only thing that they could do was get high.
I couldn’t imagine a more disgusting couple off the top of my head then them. They shared everything together in that apartment, it was amazing that they actually ate because the way Jason described this relationship was doing drugs 24/7 or nursing the other person when they got sick from the drugs.
Over the course of a year this was what the relationship led too. That is until one night...
One night while Diane was lying in bed, sweat soaking through the sheets, as she battled to come off of heroin she broke down. She started to search like a scavenger looking for rocks of crack in which she might have dropped. Jason said to cut it out as she was going crazy. The word crazy isn’t the right word as to explain what happened next.
Diane scaled up to the balcony, threatening to commit suicide, and Jason couldn’t bear to watch as he ran for the streets. Jason never saw her again, thinking that she probably killed herself, Jason didn’t want to see himself like Diane, as this lifestyle was getting old.
However, he wouldn’t clean up overnight. Even though the lifestyle of his had run its peak it was the only thing that he knew.
In a final attempt to get cured he talked to his Aunt which told him about a new procedure called rapid opiate detox. It was a costly procedure and even though Jason had burned through his wallet with purchasing drugs over the course of time, the money never ran out.
What this procedure would did was it knocks you out for 72 hours with heavy sedation, and you are put on another drug into your system which vacuums the heroin right out of you. This would speed up the withdrawal so it’s over within 72 hours. And you wake up, cured!
Alleluia praise the lord!
You know when something appears to go to be true, it probably is. Jason needed a miracle to clean up his act and this wouldn’t be his miracle. It truly is amazing what Jason does to try and clean up his lifestyle. I’m sure that this rapid opiate detox does work for almost everyone.
Then again not everybody is Jason Peter as this is only one Jason Peter.
Jason would arrive in Orange County, California to a luxury rehab center called Beau Monde which surprised me when I found that it has since closed down. However, Jason would make the greatest arrival of all-time, he was flying in with “style” or at least a style that any drug user would drool over.
Jason hired a private plane which cost $30,000 and he paid for this with no hesitation.
$30,000 is a lot of money and for him to pay for him with a swipe of a credit card makes me a little jealous. However, never do I want to go through Jason went through. Apparently money really doesn’t buy happiness since I don’t think you could define the term misery any better than illustrating a picture of Jason’s face in the dictionary.
Jason would fly out of a small airport located in Teterboro, NJ. The night before he left for California, he hired a limo to drive him into New York City to pick up 10 eight-balls of coke and seven bundles of heroin. Jason wasn’t finished. He also hired two female escorts to come along with him for the flight.
I could only imagine what was going through the limo drivers head or if the limo driver even knew what he was doing. God forbid, they got pulled over by the police and searched the limo to find a massive amount of cocaine and heroin that would be enough to lock up both them up life pending an investigation.
Nothing bad happened during the trip into the city and everything went according to plan. However, during this time 9/11 wasn’t too long ago and the thought of going through security freaked Jason out. I’ll let Jason describe what he did to get through security.
“There was a bulge in my pants as we waited to board the plane at Teterboro but as beautiful as the girls were, they weren’t the source of it. No, the bulge was the thick packages of drugs that I had taped to my pubic area with masking tape. I figured that if there was some kind of security check, maybe the airline would have the decency not to rummage around in my balls looking for contraband.”
Jason’s paranoid thoughts about going through security vanished when he didn’t even have to go through security, so now he could create a new bulge in his pants with two lovely escorts by his side.
Jason went straight for his pants when he pulled out “the good stuff” and by judging by the girls faces when they saw cocaine and heroin coming out his pants, it was like Christmas to them.
Jason immediately told the girls that the heroin wasn’t for them but they could have all the coke their nostrils could handle. Jason figured any escort appreciates some cocaine every once in a while. “You show me an escort who doesn’t do coke and I’ll show you a politician who never told a lie.”
Jason truly knew how to go to rehab in style, he spent $30,000 on the jet, approximately $3,000 on the cocaine and heroin and probably a good bundle of cash on the two escorts.
One thing that didn’t cross Jason’s mind was that this plane would have to stop at some point to refuel. The plane would refuel in Missouri, as Jason and the escorts became paranoid that the pilots would see the drugs and report them to the police.
In an effort to shut two screaming girls up, Jason did what any good guy would do. In the event that the police did show up he would say that all the drugs were his so that the girls wouldn’t get in any trouble.
You think Jason was a nice guy? Just wait 'til you find out what the pilots did for him them. Not only did they not alert the police but they even cleaned up the place a little bit where there was a neat stack of heroin and another neat stack of cocaine, it was as if pilots see this on a regular basis.
Wait, do they?
“God bless America,” one of the girls said as they got back on the plane and headed to California where Jason would go through the worst pain he ever experienced in his life.
After Jason arrived in Orange County and was taken to Beau Monde, he was immediately thrown into rapid opiate detox, where he’d wake up 72 hours later in pain that morphine just couldn’t fix.
Apparently the doctor made a “little” mistake when talking to Jason about his heroin usage. The doctor scribbled down that Jason was doing two to three bags of heroin a day. When it actuality Jason was doing using two to three bundles of heroin a day. For those who are wondering a bundle contains 10 bags, you do the math. It’s quite the difference.
The doctor couldn’t believe, and he stupidly asked Jason if he was sure that was used that much a day. Just imagine the look in Jason’s face when he responded back to the doctor. I’ll let you use your imagination on that one.
The morphine would start to kick in to where Jason could actually feel it this time knocking him out into a “nice” sleep.
That “nice” sleep ended as soon as he woke up, every part of his body hurt as every nerve in his body screamed for relief.
Jason didn’t get cured like he envisioned he only felt pain that he didn’t think he could encounter. He screamed at the doctor as the doctor told him that a period of adjustment is expected and that there would be no more sedatives for the time being.
Jason called his mother telling her that this in anger saying how this didn’t work and that he was leaving. His mother tried to calm him down as she tried calling the doctor in a panic to help her son out. The doctor told Jason’s mom that he wouldn’t be able to leave since he was in no condition to walk.
This is where the Incredible Hulk formerly known as Jason Peter appears.
When you tell Jason Peter that he can’t do something, he will prove you wrong. After 15 minutes of staggering around Jason got out of his room wearing a horribly buttoned, untucked shirt with all his belongings roughly shoved into a suitcase.
Jason would become the first patient that Dr. Benway would ever lose. The nurses couldn’t believe they were talking to a “standing” Jason Peter. You try being on so much morphine that would please someone who does two to three bundles of a heroin a day and try getting out a bed and attempting to walk four feet let alone the distance that Jason walked.
Jason called a limo service to pick up.
He knew that Los Angeles wasn’t too far away from Beau Monde. Despite the condition that Jason was in, he noticed something about his driver that only a drug addict would spot.
Jason knew that the driver had crystal meth on him and Jason was craving it like a starving man needing food to stay alive. So instead of driving to Los Angeles, the driver pulled over and jumped in the back of the limo and smoked crystal meth with Jason just 15 minutes after walking out of rehab.
Once again there will never be another person like Jason Peter or at least I hope not.
When nightfall hit, Jason ended up in his natural habitat, a four-hundred-dollar-a-night hotel this time located on Sunset Boulevard.
Jason turned on the television as he relaxed on the bed with everything a crystal meth used would need, a glass pipe, cooking ladle, aluminum foil with a nice combination of cocaine and heroin. Not once did Jason think about his family, at any moment he did think of his family he’d banish the thoughts with drugs.
Eventually Jason had enough of the mind-games going on his head and decided to call his drug buddy/limo driver to bring him to a new destination hoping Beau Monde would eventually be his final destination.
Jason did eventually show up at Beau Monde despite some minor/major altercations leading up to the event such as showing up late, but the important thing was he got there.
After a screaming match with a lady over an intercom, the lady informed him that he couldn’t check in since the doctor wasn’t there, therefore he couldn’t be let in.
Not be able to get into Beau Monde because he was hours late of his expected check in time of 6 PM. When he arrived at 2 AM, you think about it; he was only eight hours late. Well that was late enough and was told to come back at 9 AM.
Jason in a frantic mood called his brother Christian telling him what happened. Christian told him he better show up at 9 and Jason told him he would. However, if you have been following Jason’s story of telling someone he would do something you only know that he was full of it.
Jason would leave in the limo and arrive at another hotel where Jason slept for three days straight only to be awakened by security guards after his mom figured out where he was staying. Jason immediately called his mom completely going off on his mother.
He displeased that his own mother thought that he was dead. However, all she was like any good mother would do was worried about her son.
After hanging up with the phone with his mother who was holding back tears, Jason did what he did best, he got higher. After figuring out that Jason hadn’t checked into Beau Monde the phone rang once again this time his brother called with bad news.
He told Jason that Mom was sick and in the hospital, thinking that she might have had a heart attack.
Enough was enough, Jason was going to rehab and this time he wasn’t leaving until he knew he could survive without the one thing that ruled his life for the last few years, drugs.
It was like as if nothing happened days before when he showed up at the gates of Beau Monde screaming at the lady talking on the Intercom. He was greeted warmly by the same lady that he walked out in during his last stay at Beau Monde.
It was a busy morning over at Beau Monde when asked what he should do someone recommended for him to hang out by the pool for a while. I bet Jason hadn’t sat by a pool in a few years, he was then shown to his room which was a stone throw away from the indoor pool.
Jason originally believed he’d stay there for thirty days when he actually ended up staying there for a year. Instead of doing to a 12-step program where he would be lectured on how it was his disease talking to him.
Jason was given a personal treatment plan where he had a measure of control over what he was doing which gave him a sense of faith feeling that he could really change.
The detoxification process was nowhere as extreme as it was in the past. This time he was given a drug called Suboxone which dissolves under your tongue and gives you a less high feeling compared to morphine or heroin and makes it an easier to stop taking. Suboxone can cause death if you do overdose from it.
However, the thought of killing himself had longed escaped the mind of Jason Peter.
The longer he stayed at Beau Monde, the more freedom Jason had to roam around. He was able to come and go, spend the afternoon at a movie theater or spend hours sitting in a coffee house. He knew he could do this because he didn’t have the urge that he once had to get high.
The news of Jason making progress delighted his family which they told him to stay as long as it took.
During his stay at Beau Monde, he made an appearance on a HBO series called Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel. Jason would appear twice on the show while being treated at Beau Monde.
The interview was done over a course of a day with a guy named Bernard Goldberg, who Jason recognized right away because Bernard had once done a negative piece on Nebraska back in the nineties.
In between takes, the two would not talk with one another as they sat in silence as the camera crew and the director would line up the next shot.
During the interview, Jason let it all out acknowledging he abused painkillers, crack and heroin and admitting that he was in fact a junkie.
After the interview was over, Jason became worried about the interview because the only people that knew of his problems were his close friends and family and now anyone who turned into the show would find out about his story.
Once the piece aired on television, he watched it with his counselor Heidi. He sat there nervously as he watched himself talk openly on the television that he was indeed a junkie. After the piece ended, he was shaken up but Heidi told him he did well.
After the show aired, he became a recognized face in Orange County. Wherever he went people would come up to him tell him that how great it was to tell his story.
A follow up story was aired months later where this time he got to know Bernie. The two talked during the breaks and had a couple of laughs together, they would actually become friends after the interview.
Towards the end of the show, Bernie would lean across to Jason slightly and told him, “I hope you make it.”
The key word in the last sentence was hope...A word that Jason had once abandoned was now brought back into his life.
What kind of heroic story doesn’t end with the guy getting the girl? This story would end with Jason meeting the girl of his dreams.
Sarah was described as the most beautiful girl he had ever seen and he knew that this was the girl that he waited his whole life to meet. The two hit it off right away after a friend of Jason’s introduced him to her.
It was around this time that Jason bought a puppy which became a symbol that not only was he able to take care of himself, but he could take of somebody else as well.
Jason’s puppy Hank was busy seeking immediate attention and Sarah would give Hank all the attention he wanted.
Jason liked the fact that Sarah was a dog lover as the two would talk about family, something which Jason was blown away by when Sarah started talking about how close she was with her family.
After meeting one another, Jason didn’t want this to end as he immediately called her asking to get together again. It what seemed like a lifetime to him the two got together again, this time Jason spilled his guts about his past.
He was worried that she would find out by her just googling his name on the Internet and find out what he had been through.
This had to be hard for him to do but it had to be done. Sarah was a taken back a little, because I’m sure never in her lifetime that she would ever have this conversation with anyone. The only thing that she wanted to know was if he was all done with everything. Jason without doubting himself told her that he was done with everything.
Great, he passed the first test but how would her parents react to their daughter dating a former junkie? Instead of his family responding how he expected. He expected his parents to ask Sarah if she thought this was a good idea.
Instead they thought about his poor mother, thinking about what she must have went through.
After that touchy conversation with meeting her parents, the two became inseparable. They went to her nephew’s baseball games, went out to dinner with her family, just to prove that he could be trusted with their loving daughter. It was then when Jason said the words he had been waiting to tell Sarah the three magic words, “I love you.”
Never did he think he’d see the day that he would be getting married but after everything he has gone through I think marriage was only bound for happen. Everything was going right for Jason it only a matter of time until he fell in love.
During the ceremony Jason started looking at everyone in attendance. Everybody that in attendance he had once hurt, he looked at his brothers, his parents, his friends and now he looked into the eyes of someone that mattered to him the most and the two said, “I do.”
My response to Hero of the Underground
Believe it or not, there is a lot more to the story of Jason Peter. What I covered in the is only the basics of Hero of the Underground.
I didn’t go over how he broke down in a hospital when he saw his brother Damien sitting in a hospital dead paralyzed after telling himself to brave for Damien.
However, broke down the moment he saw his little brother’s goal of playing at Notre Dame end after a freak accident. There is so much that I left out because I don’t want to give away his entire story.
I really hated the fact that this book had to come to an end. I have never enjoyed a book the way I enjoyed reading his life story. While I read this book I asked myself what kinds of people are reading his book.
I have an excellent long term memory but my short term memory is pretty much shot. I remember watching Jason Peter play at Nebraska back in the '90s.
I remember the fact that he was from New Jersey and I thought that was cool enough. I remember asking my parents where Middletown, NJ was and they said somewhere down the shore.
I don’t know why I asked so many questions when I watched Nebraska play against Peyton Manning and the Tennessee Volunteers but for some reason I did. I became an instant fan of someone that I didn’t even exist the day before.
One day last semester when I sitting in my Criminal Justice class the my mind went down memory lane and Jason Peter entered my mind. So I did what any person would do when the question of “whatever happened to so and so” enters their mind, I googled his name.
The word shocked couldn’t explain what I found. Right after class I walked over to the school bookstore and ordered Hero of the Underground. I got it the following Monday and I finished the book in ten days. I couldn’t his story was fact and not fiction.
I’ve used some of the pain killers that Jason abused in the past for surgeries that I’ve had, and I’m sure you the reader have used pain killers before. Last June I had a surgery performed here in Tucson. It was a real pain in the ass in my opinion, those who know me probably just got a good laugh out of my last statement.
After the surgery I got prescription for Oxycodine and the only directions I was given came on the label, take one tablet every six hours as needed for pain. When I returned home to New Jersey I met with my main doctor where I was given another prescription for Oxycodine.
This time my doctor looked me straight in the eye telling me this is something that I shouldn’t mess around with and take only when I was in pain. Wow, why couldn’t the one doctor in Arizona tell me this? I’m actually looking at the bottle that I was given it’s empty I don’t why I haven’t thrown it out yet, it’s been on the to do list.
The last time I would used Oxycodine was back in October when I was involved in a little car accident.
I don’t really understand how someone should become addicted to pain killers. However, after reading this book, I view the game of football from a different prospective. I realized that no athlete is ever 100 percent and that some athletes rely on pain killers such as Oxycodine or Xenax and could get a prescription quicker than it took me to write this last sentence.
I never answered my own question before, who else has read this book. I know it’s been a New York Times bestselling book. But why? Do people enjoy reading about someone being miserable and live to tell about it?
Has one of his readers ever battled drug addiction and want to read how Jason overcome his countless addictions? Has a die-hard Nebraska Cornhusker fan bought his book to think it was about all-about the dynasty that Nebraska built in the 1990’s to only never read the book and just put it on the shelf to collect dust?
Everyone has a different story as to why they do the things they do. Jason decided to share his story. I do fear that some people who read his book and it only gave them ideas to steal their parent’s pain killers or to wonder what it was like to get high off crystal meth compared to smoking marijuana.
I hope that if someone did have that idea that they finished Jason’s book. Jason didn’t risk his life this for entertainment.
This guy was miserable why would someone want to live the lifestyle that he lived? I wouldn’t wish my own worst enemy whomever they be (if I even have one or one day do have one) to go through what he went through.
I’m sure Jason has had people tell them that his book changed their lives. It made me somewhat realize what drug addicts go through. I don’t think anyone can really understand what someone has gone through unless they themselves have gone through it themselves.
It’s amazing that Jason doesn’t have a disease like HIV after the countless needles that he put in his body over the years. What’s even more remarkable is that he is a survivor. I think he survived because of the fact that despite the punishment that he put his family through, they never gave up on him. Remember the word hope?
Another thing that I learned during my reading of his book that just because what you have today doesn’t mean that it is going to be there tomorrow. Jason made his living using his body and when his body said game over, his life almost said game over as well.
It’s nice to hear that Jason is still clean, he currently lives in Nebraska where he is a college football legend. He currently works for ESPN Radio, I guess his mom was right that he would do well in broadcasting. I guess he hasn’t said any f-bombs on the radio since he hasn’t been kicked off the air yet.
If you haven’t read his book read it. It’s not an easy read, you might have to put it down sometimes since it might a little graphic at times. However, this is a true story and Jason Peter told it all in 289 pages what do you have to say about that?
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