Hero of the Underground: A Memoir Book

Jason Peter played pro football for a few years, and when his career ended he basically had access to unlimited amounts of cash. This memoir relates how he spent most of it on drugs, going from painkillers to cocaine to crack to heroin. The football parts of the book aren't interesting unless you like hearing ex-jocks rant about being warriors. When the author's body breaks down and his team kicks him to the curb, he is free to devote all his free time to drugs.

Peter's drug stories are the centerpiece of this memoir; they are fascinating in a horrifying sort of way, like a car crash. There's the time his strung-out ex-girlfriend threatens to kill herself; the author flees from his apartment in a crack-induced panic and spends the next 3 or 4 hours evading the imaginary cops and DEA agents tailing him. When Peter's family stages an intervention he stuffs his drugs in his pockets and locks himself in the bathroom; he then rushes past them and spends the next six or seven hours doing drugs in public restrooms. Or there's the time the he rents a private plane to go to a rehab clinic, and shows up at the airport with a pair of rented call girls and a bunch of heroin and cocaine stuffed down his crotch - needless to say that particular rehab stint doesn't go too well.

Peter is honest throughout, which makes him a sympathetic figure. He tries to link his drug use to football, which doesn't work for me. The author's love for drugs shines through the pages; I think he would have come to this if he'd been an accountant.