As a recovering addict herself, North Dakota's first lady hopes to tackle addiction issues

BISMARCK — Sitting on a couch in the sunlit living room of the North Dakota Governor's Residence, first lady Kathryn Helgaas Burgum had something she wanted to talk about, something she had never made public before.

She's already announced her plans to work to erase the social stigma around addiction and spread the word that it's a chronic disease, not a character flaw. But what she hasn't told everyone is that she herself has struggled with an alcohol addiction.

"I'm very passionate about addiction because it affects me personally," she said in a recent interview with The Forum. "I have actually been in recovery for 15 years now."

Helgaas Burgum, 53, said she intends to use her personal experience to help others battling addiction and to address what she believes is a statewide crisis. She hopes that by talking about addiction she can reduce the shame associated with it — a shame, she says, she had to overcome before starting down a path to recovery.

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