August
"the clients who stay with you"
Some clients stay with you after they leave — the ones who left treatment, the ones who relapsed after real progress, the ones who died. If you've been doing this work long enough, you have names. This month is about the grief this work carries: your clients' and yours, ahead of a day on the calendar — August 31 — that lands hard on both.
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⚕️ Clinical note: Educational content meant to support your clinical thinking — not replace your training, supervision, or judgment.
💡 August Tip
📋 Late-Summer Check-In
Two-thirds of the year is behind you. Before fall picks up speed, an honest look at what you're carrying:
- Which client are you still carrying — and have you said their name out loud to anyone?
- What has this summer cost your caseload — and what has it cost you?
- When was your last real day off, and what would it take to get another one before September?
- What do you want to put down before fall gets here?
✅ August Checklist
Overdose Awareness Day. Grief Awareness Day. Back-to-school. Wellness Month. Here's what to focus on.
💡 Tip: Screenshot this list or bookmark this page. Come back at the end of the month to see what you actually did.
📅 August Awareness Dates
Click any card to see related resources.
💚 Feeling overwhelmed? Pick one or two that connect with your caseload right now — and come back for the rest later.
International Overdose Awareness Day
The world's largest annual campaign to end overdose and remember those lost. For your caseload, the day is personal — and for many clinicians, it's personal too.
📊 Overdose Loss: The Clinical Reality
- Overdose loss runs through your caseload. Many clients have lost a friend, a partner, a parent, a using buddy — often more than one. The grief is frequently unprocessed, complicated by guilt, and rarely asked about directly.
- Returning to use after a gap is the deadliest window. Summer disrupted routines and attendance. Clients who "took a break" are coming back to lowered tolerance and an unpredictable, fentanyl-era supply — both things at once.
- Grief itself is a relapse risk. Anniversary dates, memorial days, and public campaigns can activate loss. August 31 can steady a client — or destabilize one. Which way it goes often depends on whether anyone prepared them for it.
- Clinicians lose people too. If you work in SUD treatment long enough, some of the names on this day are yours. That grief is real, it counts, and the field is bad at making room for it. If you haven't lost anyone yet, this month is when you build the support structure before you need it.
💡 Before, On, and After the Day
- Before: Ask directly. "August 31 is Overdose Awareness Day. Is that a day that touches anyone you've lost?" Then map it — what they want to do, who they'll be with, what would help.
- The naloxone review, with everyone: Do you have it? Is it expired? Do you know how to use it? Does your family have it? Risk level you perceive is not the criterion. Everyone.
- Work the full relapse arc while things are calm: the prevention conversation before crisis, the crisis plan complete in advance, and the post-relapse reflection that treats relapse as data — not failure.
- After: Debrief the day in the next session — and debrief your own. If you attended a vigil, lit a candle, or just carried it quietly, take that to supervision or consultation instead of home.
🔗 External Resources
International Overdose Awareness Day — Official Campaign ↗ SAMHSA: Overdose Prevention and Response ↗ CDC: Stop Overdose ↗ Never Use Alone — 1-800-484-3731 ↗🗺️ Explore the Interactive Board
High-Risk Individuals Interactive Board — Resources and clinical guides for working with clients at elevated risk Member🖥️ Interactive Activities
Relapse Prevention Plan Builder — Build a personalized plan step by step Member Build Your Own Recovery Toolkit — Assemble coping tools clients keep Member🛒 Related Items in the Shop
Tools for overdose prevention and relapse work with the whole system:
📚 Related Resources in the Library
National Grief Awareness Day
Recovery is full of grief nobody asks about — lost people, lost years, lost identities, and sometimes the substance itself. The day before Overdose Awareness Day is no coincidence on this caseload.
📊 Grief in Recovery: The Clinical Reality
- Grief in SUD work is layered. Clients grieve people they lost during active use, relationships that didn't survive recovery, years they can't get back — and often the substance itself, which functioned as a coping partner for decades.
- Much of it is disenfranchised. Grief for an ex who's still alive, a using buddy the family disapproved of, or a drug of choice doesn't get cards or casseroles. Unacknowledged grief tends to go underground — and resurface as something else.
- Grief and craving can feel identical in the body. Restlessness, ache, the urge to make the feeling stop. Clients who can't name grief often reach for what used to quiet it.
- Clinician grief gets no ritual. No bereavement leave, no ceremony, no acknowledgment beyond an incident report. It's still grief, and it still needs somewhere to go.
💡 What to Ask on the Day (and Any Day)
- "Who have you lost that we've never really talked about?" — the direct version. Many clients have been waiting to be asked.
- Name the losses that don't look like losses. Custody. A marriage. A version of themselves. The substance. "It's okay to grieve something that was also hurting you."
- Watch for grief wearing other clothes. Irritability, flatness, sudden cravings around anniversaries. Ask about the calendar before assuming it's resistance.
- Do your own inventory. If a client keeps coming back to you, that's grief — not a professionalism problem. Take it to supervision, consultation, or your own therapist.
🔗 External Resources
Columbia Center for Prolonged Grief ↗ What's Your Grief — Grief Education by Mental Health Professionals ↗ Association for Death Education and Counseling ↗📚 Related Resources in the Library
Purple Heart Day
A day honoring wounds people can see. Many of the veterans on your caseload carry the ones people can't — and the substance use is often how those wounds have been managed.
💡 What to Know, What to Ask
- Trauma and SUD travel together in veteran clients — combat exposure, military sexual trauma, and moral injury frequently sit underneath the drinking or use, and often no one has asked about them directly.
- Ask about service — and about the day. "Does Purple Heart Day bring anything up for you?" Some veterans carry survivor's guilt about who came home and who didn't. Commemorative days surface it.
- Moral injury isn't PTSD. Guilt and shame about what someone did, witnessed, or failed to prevent responds differently than fear-based trauma. Knowing the difference changes what you ask.
- Know the crisis line cold. Have it ready before you need it — and make sure your veteran clients have it saved, not just heard.
🔗 External Resources
Veterans Crisis Line — Dial 988, Press 1 ↗ Make the Connection (VA) — Veteran Stories and Resources ↗ SAMHSA: Veterans and Military Families ↗🗺️ Explore the Interactive Board
Veterans & Military Personnel Interactive Board — Resources and clinical guides for military-connected clients Member🛒 Related Items in the Shop
Tools for trauma-informed work with veteran clients:
📚 Related Resources in the Library
Back-to-School Season
For parents in recovery, the return to school can be as destabilizing as summer break — routines shift again, money gets tight, and the school system doesn't know their story.
💡 What to Watch For With Parents in Recovery
- The routine shifts again. Morning schedules, pickup logistics, homework battles — right as clients finally adjusted to summer. Each transition is a stress load, and stress loads are relapse math.
- Financial strain is real and immediate. Supplies, fees, clothes, childcare gaps. Money stress shows up in session as irritability and missed appointments before anyone names the actual problem.
- School systems can activate shame. Forms that ask about home life, teachers who know the history, custody arrangements visible at pickup. Ask what walking into that building feels like.
- Treatment schedules need to adapt. "How does your session time work once school starts?" Ask in August — not after the no-shows begin in September.
🔗 External Resources
NACoA — National Association for Children of Addiction ↗ Sesame Workshop: Parental Addiction Resources for Young Children ↗ SAMHSA: Resources for Families Coping with Mental and Substance Use Disorders ↗🗺️ Explore the Interactive Board
Schools & Academic Settings Interactive Board — Resources for clinicians working in and with school systems Member🛒 Related Items in the Shop
Tools for supporting families through transitions:
📚 Related Resources in the Library
National Wellness Month
A month about wellness in a field that burns through its own people. This one isn't about your clients — it's about whether you're going to still be doing this work in five years.
📊 Clinician Wellness: The Clinical Reality
- This month's theme cuts both ways. A month about clients who stay with you is also a month about what carrying them costs — and grief you never process becomes distance you don't notice.
- Burnout doesn't announce itself. It creeps: flatness where dread used to be, numbness where investment was. By the time it's obvious, you're deep in it.
- Resilience and dissociation look identical from the outside. Each loss landing quieter can mean you've healed — or that something turned the volume down. Only honest reflection tells them apart.
- Wellness is infrastructure, not indulgence. Supervision you actually use, therapy of your own, days off that happen — these are what keep clinicians in the field with their whole selves intact.
💡 A Wellness Month That Isn't Performative
- Measure it. Take a validated self-assessment like the ProQOL and get an actual read on compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress — instead of "I'm fine."
- Book the day off now. Not "when things calm down." Things don't calm down. Put it on the calendar this week.
- Use supervision for the weight, not just the paperwork. The risk assessment gets brought because the agency requires it. Bring the part that doesn't: the fear, the grief, the client you can't put down.
- Answer your own intake question. "Who do you call when it's bad?" If your answer is "no one," that's your treatment priority this month.
🔗 External Resources
ProQOL — Professional Quality of Life Measure (Free Self-Assessment) ↗ APA: Self-Care Resources for Psychologists and Clinicians ↗ 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline ↗🛒 Related Items in the Shop
Tools for clinician reflection and self-care:
📚 Related Resources in the Library
The New Clinician Survival Kit Series Is Back
A five-part arc on authority, every Sunday in August — starting August 2 with Blog #35: "Have You Ever Used?" Explore the series →
The Clients Who Stay With You
This three-page worksheet is for processing clients who linger in your mind — whether they left treatment, relapsed, or died. It starts with space to name who's staying with you and what happened, then moves into a feelings checklist (sadness, guilt, anger, relief and guilt about feeling relief, numbness, helplessness). The middle section addresses the questions that linger — the "what ifs" and "should haves" that keep you up at night — with prompts to reality-test those thoughts. There's also a section to counter grief's tendency to erase the good by remembering what you did right and what progress was made. The worksheet ends with a needs checklist to identify what support you need right now.
Best for: Clinicians carrying grief about clients they can't stop thinking about — especially those who've experienced client death, relapse after significant progress, or clients who left treatment against advice. Also useful for supervision conversations or processing with a therapist.
Access ResourceInternational Overdose Awareness Day Guide
This two-page guide helps addiction counselors navigate August 31 — a day that can be heavy for both clients and clinicians. It covers how to support clients before the day, on the day, and after, with specific language for clients who've lost someone to overdose. There's also a section for clinicians — acknowledging that you've likely lost clients too, and offering prompts for connecting with colleagues or processing your own grief. The guide covers why late summer carries elevated overdose risk (disrupted routines, dropped attendance, and the dangers of returning to use after a break) and ends with a naloxone review checklist to use with all clients, regardless of perceived risk level.
Best for: Addiction counselors who've lost clients to overdose and need support navigating the day, or who want to proactively support clients who've experienced overdose loss. Also useful for program directors planning team support around this date.
Access Resource💬 Bring to Supervision This Month
Not sure what to talk about in your next supervision? Try one of these:
- → "There's a client I lost who I still think about. Is there room to actually talk about that here?"
- → "Overdose Awareness Day is coming and I'm dreading it. Can we plan how I get through the 31st?"
- → "A client's grief is hitting close to something of mine. How do I hold both in the room?"
- → "Summer scattered half my caseload. Can we talk re-engagement strategy before fall hits and I lose them?"
- → "I haven't taken a real day off since spring. Is that starting to show in my work?"
💡 Tip: Screenshot one of these and bring it to your next 1:1. Sometimes the best supervision starts with a good question.
📝 Related Reading
Coming in September
National Recovery Month and Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. Clinical resources for celebrating recovery in all its forms, screening and safety work — and the recovery the field keeps forgetting to count: the clinician's.
"Recovery Month: Including Yours"