Welcome!

 

Welcome to the First Annual Louisiana Recovery Capital Conference being hosted March 7th and 8th,
2024 at Southeastern Louisiana University. We are honored to bring this conference to
you through our partnership with the Louisiana Department of Health, Office of Behavioral
Health and Florida Parishes Human Services Authority, The Goldring Foundation and
our Conference partners.  This Conference promises to focus on enhancing Louisiana’s
Capacity to build and sustain collegiate recovery communities at our higher education
institutions as well as provide continuing education on current issues related to
substance misuse,  treatment and recovery. 

 

 

Journalist and author Sam Quinones is scheduled as the keynote speaker Friday, March
8th 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.”

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.

For the book, Quinones sought unnoticed stories of Americans involved in community
repair, such as a man who secretly kept a community center open for kids and a woman
who adopts an infant and cares for the child’s bedridden mother put in a vegetative
state by drug overdose.

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.

In January 2022, The Least of Us was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle
award for Best Nonfiction Book of 2021.

Quinones plans to host a question and answer session after his keynote address. He
will also host a book signing. 

The Conference is open to the professional community, Southeastern Louisiana Faculty
Staff and students.

Registration is open Here