Southeastern Lion Up Recovery to host conference in March
Monday, February 19, 2024 
by: Tonya Lowentritt
HAMMOND - Southeastern Louisiana University’s LION UP Recovery will sponsor the
Louisiana Recovery Capital Conference March 7 and 8. Scheduled at the Southeastern
Student Union Theater, the inaugural conference will focus on topics related to substance
misuse, treatment and recovery, as well as take a look at sustainable collegiate recovery
programming at institutions across Louisiana.
The conference will also include continuing education opportunities for counseling
and other mental health professionals.
Journalist and author Sam Quinones, the featured keynote speaker, is scheduled
to give his remarks Friday, March 8, at 8:30 a.m.
Quinones is a critically acclaimed storyteller and former L.A. Times reporter.
In 2021 he released the book “The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the
Time of Fentanyl and Meth,” which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle
award for Best Nonfiction Book of 2021. The author’s website describes the book as
deepening the story of the nation’s opioid epidemic to include the spread of mass
supplies of synthetic drugs, such as fentanyl and meth.
The Least of Us also delves into the neuroscience of addiction, and it follows
Quinones’ 2015 release, “Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic.”
“After years of interviews, research, and writing, finally, that’s what this
national saga has left me with,” Quinones wrote. “That the lessons of neuroscience,
the epidemic, and the pandemic are really the same: That we are strongest in community,
as weak as our most vulnerable, and the least of us lie within us all.”
Experts say fentanyl is the deadliest drug ever to be sold on U.S. streets. Quinones
also broke the story of Mexican traffickers’ method of making methamphetamine in catastrophic
supplies, “now accompanied by waves of psychosis resembling schizophrenia, mental
illness, homelessness and tent encampments across America,” his website says.
Quinones plans to hold a question and answer session after his keynote address.
He will also host a book signing.
Registration costs, which include special rates for students, and other details can
be accessed on the website southeastern.edu/recovery.
“This is the first time offering a conference around building recovery capital
and looking at sustainable solutions for people in our community who chose to live
a life in recovery,” said Assistant Director of LION UP Recovery and Intervention
and Conference Chair Annette Baldwin.
For more information, contact Baldwin at Recovery@southeastern.edu.
