A Telecommunicator's Thoughts on International Overdose Awareness Day
Everybody has different ways their mind works so some emergency telecommunicators will tell you they remember all their calls, and some will tell you they remember none of them, or just the ones that stand out for them. Well, I’m in that second category. I can forget about my day the moment I take a break or go home for the day. If someone were to ask me how my day was, I would just say ‘fine’ and not even know what happened most of the time. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have good recall for events or information that’s relevant to me, it just means that I don’t remember every detail like someone who is right here and emotionally invested in the incident. We can’t talk about most things anyway, so you just kind of, let it go. Forget.
In recent conversations I’ve been having lately in another area of life I have been asked to search my memory for a time when I felt… ______. I don’t know, something emotional. Fill in the blank. Well, the exercise was really hard for me. Not because I don’t feel emotion. Actually, I think it’s the opposite. I feel a crazy amount of emotion, and quite deeply a lot of the time, but I process it quickly and then have to move on quickly as well. It’s strange that I have thousands of calls, memories, stories, and yet, at the same time, sometimes it feels like… none. Like Dumbledore in Harry Potter, I just take the memory out and it sits there somewhere, but I don’t always know how to access it. And I survive.
The last call I took for an overdose was for a victim who I know I had talked to personally, and their family, on multiple occasions prior to that particular call, where the victim died. From my perspective, they were pretty young too. I remember feeling some level of compassion. Because I was familiar with them I remember observing my own thoughts: “Aww, that’s sad. I wonder how this is going to change their family behavior dynamics.” It was more analytical, emotionally removed. And then I remember thinking, “Hm. I wonder if that’s normal. I guess it’s normal for me.” And that was it.
It isn’t that I feel nothing. It’s just that, I mean, it’s not my family. I am trained to let it go. It just is what it is. Besides, I have to keep going so I can help the next caller who might be overdosing as well, because they do come in multiples.
I understand that overdose has a lot of stigma around it. And I don’t believe drugs are a good thing, nor is addiction. But I bet more people than not are addicted to some thing or another, whether it be drugs, food, sex, games, work, approval. Maybe recognizing this helps me to have a more open mind and less judgment. I do feel compassion around that.
But what if it was my family? What if it was my child? And that “what if” is where were it really hits me hardest. It’s always the question that activates my empathy. I would fight with everything I have to keep that from happening. This is a global problem, and a hard one, so it doesn’t do any good to pretend overdose doesn’t happen. It’s better to understand that it’s real, and what you can do about it or prevent it.
International Overdose Awareness Day is August 31st. Did you know there was International Overdose Awareness Day? I’ve been an adult long enough to have had the opportunity to have discovered this, but surprisingly I barely found out this was a recognized day this year, and it was by chance, when I was researching other seasonal events.
In 2001, a woman named Sally J. Finn organized a small remembrance event in Melbourne, Australia for people affected by overdose at a Salvation Army needle-exchange program. In 2012 the Penington Institute made that local event global. It’s fitting that August 31st is the last day of winter in Australia. Spring, the season of renewal and hope literally right around the corner. Nature’s way of showing us: healing comes. I would bet that’s not an accident, but I didn’t try to reach out to her to find out. But this means that one compassionate person (on the other side of the world, for me) saw a need for people to come support each other in an emotionally healthy way, and that idea grew and grew until over a decade later that seed reached global awareness.
I think it’s probably safe to say that we all have either been directly affected or know someone who has been affected by overdose in one way or another, and I know overdose can be a hard subject for a lot of people to talk about. For such a massive global issue you might find yourself feeling a lot of different ways about it depending on your perspective. Unsure, hopeless, hopeful, grieved, maybe even surprised. But I would at least put forth a question: What’s one little thing that can you do about it? Just like Sally J. Finn organizing a small event that eventually went global, what if the small seeds we plant today also contribute to the growth of a forest?
And here I am, learning about International Overdose Awareness Day in its 25th year. I don’t know about you, but that gives me a sense of hope. Hope is worth sharing.
To Learn More:
You can read more about the global campaign at https://www.overdoseday.com and I recommend checking it out. Here you will learn about overdose basics, learn more about the evolution of the campaign, and I especially appreciated the tributes section where individuals wrote in with messages to and about their loved ones that they lost to overdose. I found this section very moving.
Relevant to the United States, it is also worth checkout SAMHSA the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. This website gives you options for exploring Finding Help & Support, information on substance abuse, mental health resources including learning more about 988, the suicide and crisis hotline.
You may also want to visit the United States Drug Enforcement Administration if you are interested in law enforcement laws and regulations on controlled substances and criminal justice at https://www.dea.gov.
References
Penington Institute . (n.d.). About the campaign . Retrieved August 22, 2026, from International Overdose Awareness Day : https://www.overdoseday.com/about-the-campaign/
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (n.d.). Home. Retrieved August 22, 2026, from SAMHSA: https://www.samhsa.gov
United States Drug Enforcement Administration. (n.d.). About . Retrieved August 22, 2026, from DEA.gov : https://www.dea.gov/who-we-are/about