Thronateeska is hosting Museum MAYhem Saturday, May 13 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. This event, and admission into the Museum, are free to the public. 

This Fun and Family-Friendly event is aimed to promote drug education for all ages and facilitate difficult conversations between families. There will be a wide variety of hands-on activities including K9 drug and pursuit demonstrations, ambulance walk throughs,  Albany Dougherty Drug Unit is hosting a drug take back, family learning sessions, Museum tours, bounce houses, face painting, games, crafts, food trucks, and mental health and drug education stations. National representatives from both the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services (SAMSHA) will be on site to help promote and educate.

DEA Representatives will lead guided tours though the DEA exhibit, Drugs: Costs and Consequences, at 10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:30 pm., 1:30 p.m., 2:30 p.m., and 3:30 p.m. 

The following Learning Sessions will be held in the Chautauqua Room:

11:00 a.m. Mental Health led by Jere Brands, representative for the National Alliance on Mental Illness

1:00 p.m. Effective Preventative Strategies for Children, Adolescents, and Families led by Amy Jack with Graceway

3:00 p.m. Opioid Substance Misuse led by Phillis Rolle with the Georgia Department of Public Health

The Lee County Sherriff’s K9 Unit will hold demonstrations at 10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m., and 1:30 p.m. outside of the Chautauqua Room. 

Guests are encouraged to close out National Prevention Week by sharing their Prevention Stories at the Museum. A national representative from SAMSHA will be available to guide guests and help them tell their story. 

Various organizations and activities will be set up outside of the Museum including Lee County Animal Shelter pet adoptions, ASPIRE, Albany Area Primary Health Care, Phoebe, The Anchorage, Health Lifestyles, Albany Recreation and Parks, Girl Scouts, Dougherty County EMS, forensic fingerprint activity, face painting, bounce houses, ADDU Drug take Back, Lee County Sherriff’s Department K9 Unit,  NAMI, and more.

Appropriate for children in fourth grade and up, the exhibit is free for anyone to visit. Drug misuse is a difficult conversation in general and can be increasingly more difficult for parents and children. Drugs: Costs and Consequences offers a platform for families and peers to make conservations easier through the interactive exhibit components and guided tours by exhibit educators. As this exhibit stimulates an important and heavy topic of conversation, visitors are encouraged to decompress by coupling their trip to the DEA Traveling Exhibit with trips to Thronateeska’s Science and History Museum or Planetarium, Flint Riverquarium and Chehaw Park and Zoo. Half-day, full-day and multi-day trips can be scheduled as well. For more information, please visit artesianalliance.org.

The exhibit is part of the educational outreach efforts of the DEA Museum in Arlington, Virginia. The DEA Educational Foundation continues in its long-standing support and coordination of the exhibit, working with the Museum. For more information about the exhibit, please visit drugexhibit.org.