“In one tweet he said he’d tried every painkiller in the book and weed was the only thing that helped.” – Felicia Gans, The Boston Globe (boston.com)
This is the story of Pete Frates, a gifted athlete and extraordinary human being, who died young of ALS – Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It was his discovery of medicinal cannabis that helped him survive the constant muscle pain, stiffness and out-of-control anxiety.
“The Boston College graduate and star of the BC baseball team had been diagnosed with ALS years earlier,” notes Boston Globe reporter Felicia Gans who interviewed Pete’s family at length. “He was already seeing top psychiatrists and therapists at Massachusetts General Hospital. He had tried every anxiety drug made available to him. All his family wanted was something — anything — that would ease the anxiety. Frates felt his illness left him trapped inside his own body.’
“Pete was always super on edge before we started to use marijuana; anything could be a trigger for him,” Pete’s wife, Julie (pictured here), told Gans.“If his hands weren’t moved correctly, or something wasn’t done 
the right way he was not able to communicate with us exactly what he needed. All of those things were just a constant battle for us.” At one point, Pete said he felt like he was being buried alive. “With ALS your brain’s intact but you lose all your functions,” he said.
Cannabis brought such relief to Pete that he was determined to share his story with as big an audience as possible. “He wanted other ALS patients to give cannabis a try,” Pete’s wife Julie said. “It helped us so much that it seemed like we had this magic potion that other people couldn’t get to.”
“When they first started experimenting with marijuana, shortly after Frates was put on a ventilator in 2015, his care team would buy cannabis plants and create their own tincture, an alcohol-based cannabis extract that they delivered through his feeding tube” Felicia Gans writes. “Later they experimented with making a salve to rub on his legs to help with muscle tightness.”
Pete Frates died in 2019. He had just turned 34. His family keeps speaking out about what a “Godsend” medical cannabis had been for Pete who had found relief from muscle stiffness, painful cramping, and out-of-control anxiety.
“After we tried medicinal cannabis it was night and day,” Julie said. “If Pete could take the edge off with the weed, that was a win for the day.”
Pete was a man who accepted his illness and used it to do great things. There was probably no one more than Pete Frates who drew national attention for the “Ice Bucket Challenge” – a yearly event that’s raised over $220 million dollars for ALS awareness and research. Frates died in 2019 and all of us dealing with the horrors of this terrible illness will always remember Pete. He was a hero.
Sources:
Wikipedia
Pete Frates Family Foundation: