Hero of the Underground: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Jason Peter (Author), Tony O'Neill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 8, 2008

I wasn’t afraid of death.

How could I be? I lived under death’s shadow every day. When you swallow eighty Vicodin, twenty sleeping pills, drink a bottle of vodka, and still survive, a certain sense of invulnerability stays with you. When you continually use drugs with the kind of reckless determination that I did, the limit to how much heroin or crack you can ingest is not defined in dollar amounts, but in the amounts your body can withstand without experiencing a seizure or respiratory failure. Yet at the end of every binge, every night of lining up six, seven, eight crack pipes and hitting them one after the other bam! bam! bam! every night of smoking and snorting bag after bag of heroin . . . after all of that, when you still wake up to see the same dirty sky over you as the night before, you start to think that instead of dying, maybe your punishment is to live---to be stuck in this purgatory of self-abuse and misery for an eternity. Sometimes you start to think that death would come as a blessed relief.

Toward the end, I found myself contemplating death again. Only this time I wasn’t going to leave it to chance. I was going to buy a gun, load the thing, place the barrel in my mouth, and blow my fucking brains out.

I sat on my parents’ sofa as I pondered this. All I needed was a gun.

And then all--
of my problems--
would be solved.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Peter, a star at the University of Nebraska's storied football program in the late 1990s and a first-round NFL draft pick, details his short, frenzied life as a drug user and veteran of the treatment center circuit. It started with painkillers in college, which turned into a full-blown addiction as he battled an array of injuries that ended his career by his late 20s. With plenty of money and time available, Peter's partying escapades eventually led him to freebasing cocaine and turning his upscale New York City apartment into arguably the world's most expensive heroin retreat, complete with a live-in junkie stripper girlfriend. Avoiding self-help urgings and self-congratulations, Peter (who is now clean) and O'Neill have crafted an unflinching look at the dark side of a life devoted to pleasure. Peter's recollection of his college glory days is a little overbearing, but the book's power lies in his honesty in detailing the depths of his despair from seeking the next high. (July)
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Review

“Hero of the Underground gives us a portrait of red-blooded jock as monster dope fiend. It’s a savage, unsparing, eye-popping ride through the dark soul of big money, endless drugs, American manhood, and our national past time---self-destruction. Ex-Cornhusker Jason Peter writes like a soulful badass, and we’re lucky he lived to tell the tale. Had Hunter Thompson been a football player instead of a fan, this is the book he’d have written. Flat-out, mash-your-face-in-the-dirt amazing.” --Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight

"Bruising... more harrowing than usual. Peter’s narrative relentlessly focuses on the brutalizing facts, and it is free from the macho posturing and self-congratulatory navel-gazing common in recovery memoirs. Nightmarishly honest." --Kirkus Reviews

"Wow, I am not sure how to express how unsettling this wound up being, for me.  The book is a sledgehammer.  When I think about the book, I feel this sort of hollow whistling in my chest.  Jesus."  --Nancy Rommelmann, New York Times bestselling author of The Real Real World

“I enjoyed the hell out of this book, sped through it like a crack fiend.  There will be a lot of interest in this part of the world because of his Cornhusker ties.  Nebraska is God’s country, but God, as Peter says, is Tom Osborne.” --Poe Ballantine, author of Things I Like About America and God Clobbers Us All

 

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (July 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031237576X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312375768
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #778,168 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars RICK SHAQ GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "HOW COULD I BE AFRAID OF DEATH WHEN I SWALLOW 60 VICODIN 20 SLEEPING PILLS, & DRINK A BOTTLE OF VODKA, July 26, 2008

By 

Rick Shaq Goldstein "*SHAQ*" (Danville, Ca, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Hero of the Underground: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Have you ever been addicted to drugs? Have you ever known anyone addicted to drugs? Have you ever been involved in an intervention?

The first twenty pages of this biography of former Nebraska Cornhusker All-American -- three-time-member -- of an NCAA football champion -- a first round NFL draft choice -- and a short lived NFL player... Jason Peter... is so "mind-crazed"... drowned in paranoia... non-stop... "Pulse-pounding"... "Heart-throttling"... and so... absolutely embedded... in complete mental and physical "INSANITY"... that if the reader has not been personally involved in a similar situation... you will believe wholeheartedly that it was all contrived by the author.

Jason comes from a loving family with an older and younger brother, all of whom excelled in football. His older brother not only played at the University of Nebraska also, but had a successful NFL career. Younger brother Damian was destined to be better than both of his brothers. In fact, then Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz, while on national TV after recruiting Damian to play for the Fighting Irish said: "Damian Peter was maybe the best offensive lineman that Notre Dame had ever recruited." Damian then had a fluke accident diving into a swimming pool at a friend's house. Damian was critically injured, and was paralyzed, until a wonder "test" drug gave him his physical movement back. This led to the absolute, most pointed comments in the entire book, other than the wanton, depraved, decadent, debauched, degenerate, destructive, drug use, that asphyxiates ninety-five percent of the entire story. The entire time that Damian was in intensive care and recovery... and even when he came back to school to watch helplessly from the sideline... Holtz never once, even called his one-time "prized" recruit, to see how he was doing... or to wish him well. Jason unabashedly states: "I STILL WOULDN'T TURN DOWN THE OPPORTUNITY TO SPIT IN LOU HOLTZ'S "EXPLETIVE" FACE. EACH SATURDAY IN THE FALL WHEN HOLTZ MAKES HIS JOVIAL, DUMB-"BUTT" REMARKS ON ESPN, I HOPE HE KNOWS THAT THERE'S AT LEAST ONE FAMILY ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SCREEN, THE PETER FAMILY, THAT KNOWS WHAT A PIECE OF SNAKE "CRAP" HE REALLY IS."

If there is a word that can make addiction seem like a graphic understatement... then that would be the word I would use to describe Jason Peter. He "DEVOURED" (Abused would be like saying a little baby kitten played with a ball of yarn.) ENORMOUS-MASS quantities of cocaine... heroin... crack... meth... continually, consecutively and concurrently. During one period in time, his cocaine use *ALONE* was *TEN-THOUSAND-DOLLARS-A-WEEK*. In addition to all the drugs listed above... NOTE: Potential reader... please clear your eyes and mind for this next statement: "HE ALSO MESSED AROUND WITH KETAMINE ON OCCASION. KETAMINE IS A CAT TRANQUILIZER."

The author should be thanking the Lord three times a day that he is alive, and there are incidents in the book where he could have been killed very easily, and there are times he attempted or contemplated suicide. No reader should view this as a happy "partying" book. I do believe the author did not show enough remorse, as he relives his drug saturated life, with a bit too much braggadocio. About the fourth or fifth time Jason was going to enter rehab, he rented a private jet for THIRTY-THOUSAND-DOLLARS, and bought TEN-EIGHT-BALLS- OF COKE, and SEVEN-BUNDLES OF HEROIN, and contracted for the services of two hookers for his flight to "salvation".

The author is lucky he's alive... and even luckier... that his family loved him enough to keep praying for him.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Money, Fame & Drug Addiction..., September 2, 2008

By 

BJ "Brett Starr" (East Peoria, IL United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hero of the Underground: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Great book!

I'd personally never even heard of Jason Peter, but the backstory sounded amazing and I love the NFL, so after reading several reviews I decided to give it a try.

Jason Peter is a prime example of how the NFL spits you out when your no longer worthy of playing, this book in no way puts down the NFL, it just once again brings to light just how harsh the system is, one of my favorite lines in the book best describes it,

"When you put on your team colors, you are no longer a person--you are a cog in a machine. That is how a team operates, and that is what wins games. People are discarded in this game when their usefulness is at an end."

JP's career was in jeopardy because of injuries, then he got hooked on pain killers, the pain killers led to cocaine, the cocaine to meth and crack

his journey thru drugs/rehab is insane, he was an unemployed millionaire with a raging drug problem

good, good stuff!!!!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Self Indulgent, December 26, 2010

By 

Huskerfan - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Hero of the Underground: A Memoir (Kindle Edition)

I am a huge Husker fan, Nebraska Alumni, and actually had a class with Jason Peter (which he never showed up to except on 'unannounced' attendance days). I was disappointed and disgusted by the self indulgent style of writing. I felt like this was nothing more than a platform for him to boast about sexual conquests, fame, and money. The fact that he had to be in a luxury rehab center makes him sound like a pampered sissy!! Furthermore, was there an editor involved in the publishing of this book? From random misplaced letters to misspelled words to the incorrect use of words - this book was a train wreck! I am very happy that Jason has gotten clean and moved on with life. But the lack of humility in which this book was written is despicable! It made me think of the James Fry novel, "A Million Little Pieces" (you know, the one that was completed fabricated?) and wonder if this is actually true! Best wishes to Jason Peter the high school football coach - but I say "don't quit your day job"!!!