Minot, North Dakota – Our state leaders have dedicated the better part of the last ten years to eradicating the stigma associated with addiction and empowering individuals seeking recovery to “reinvent” their lives, even as communities around the nation continue to struggle with the plague of drug abuse and addiction.
Have their efforts, nonetheless, been fruitful?
On the campus of Minot State University on Thursday, the seventh annual Recovery Reinvented was hosted by Governor Doug Burgum and First Lady Kathryn Burgum.
We wanted to know, seven years into the program, if there had been any noticeable changes to the stigma associated with drug use, treatment, and recovery. Indeed, according to White Shield’s Natalie Minafore.
Minafore, who works at a sober living lodge, claims Recovery Reinvented is how she found out about the peer support program.
“I love that we get to use our own experiences. We get to share our own experience with our residents and clients, and we get to show them hope because I was once that hopeless person and I get to share hope now,” said Minafore.
Recovery Reinvented was inspired by First Lady Kathryn Burgum’s own tale of recovery, and she claims that the Peace Garden State is a testament to their success in eradicating the stigma associated with addiction.
”We measure stigma, we do surveys in our state and we are reducing stigma. When we started, one in three people thought it was a moral failure. Now one in four people do and that means most of the people in our state believe it’s a disease,” said Kathryn Burgum.
