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National Recovery Month

Recovery is transforming lives in every community across America. Through the Great American Recovery, SAMHSA is working alongside states, tribes, territories, local governments, faith organizations, employers, families, recovery community organizations, treatment providers, and people with lived experience to strengthen the systems that make recovery possible for everyone. National Recovery Month is an opportunity to celebrate that progress, recognize those who make recovery possible, and invite every American to be part of building recovery-ready communities.

How To Use the Toolkit

The Great American Recovery recognizes that recovery is built through partnerships. Every organization, family member, employer, faith community, peer, and individuals in recovery has a role to play in helping people build healthy, fulfilling lives.

Your go-to resource hub is here! Copy, download, and share the toolkit’s messages, graphics, and promotional materials in ways that fit the needs of your audiences and channels. The toolkit includes:

  • Key Messages and Weekly Themes to inspire content creation.
  • Social Media Shareables to spread awareness across your platforms.
  • Digital Stickers and Email Signatures to reinforce the message.
  • Virtual Backgrounds to personalize your online meetings.
  • Hashtags to boost visibility and engagement on social media.

When we work together to advance research, normalize help-seeking, prioritize whole-person care, and foster connection through community, we can help save lives.

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Social Media Shareables

Across America, people, families, employers, faith communities, recovery and community based organizations, and local leaders are working together through the Great American Recovery to build recovery-ready communities. Use these messages to help tell that story throughout National Recovery Month.

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Week 1: Community and Connection

Theme: Recovery Happens Together

Week 2: Reducing Stigma

Theme: Reducing Stigma Through Storytelling

Week 3: Wellness

Theme: Wellness Supports Recovery

Week 4: Multiple Pathways

Theme: Multiple Pathways to Recovery

Week 5: Youth in Recovery

Theme: Youth & Family in Recovery

Weekly Themes

Week 1 (September 1–4): Recovery Happens Together

The Great American Recovery begins with a simple belief: recovery is strongest when communities work together.

  • Communities provide connection through employment services and resources to connect with family, faith communities and other Programs: a coordinated network.
  • Recovery is strengthened through relationships, belonging, meaning, and purpose. Families, faith communities, workplaces, schools, tribal communities, and local organizations all play a role in creating recovery-supportive environments.
  • Addiction thrives in isolation. Recovery grows through connection.
  • Research shows that meaningful human connection rewires the brain for resilience, hope, and sustainable sobriety.
  • When recovery housing, peer support, employment services, and support groups function as one coordinated network, communities create the conditions where lasting recovery becomes possible for more people.

Every partnership strengthens recovery.

Week 2 (September 7–11): Reducing Stigma Through Storytelling

The Great American Recovery recognizes that every recovery story has the power to reduce stigma, inspire hope, and remind others that recovery is possible for everyone.

  • When people in recovery share their stories with neighbors, employers, faith communities, and law enforcement, are evidence that recovery could be a reality.
  • Authentic storytelling: When individuals bring their recovery journeys into community spaces, police precincts, city councils, and public forums, they shift how policies are written, how resources are allocated, and how people in recovery are treated.
  • This Recovery Month, we shift the spotlight from challenges to celebration; honoring the milestones reached, relationships rebuilt, and lives fully lived, because celebrating recovery out loud is itself a powerful act of stigma reduction.
  • Organizations like the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and Faces & Voices of Recovery (FAVOR) have built movements on the power of shared experience, offering proven models for how sharing your story can build community, create belonging, improve and save lives, and grow recovery-affirming cultures.

Every story shared helps build a more recovery-ready America.

Week 3 (September 14–18): Healing and Wellbeing in Recovery

The Great American Recovery promotes recovery that supports the whole person—mind, body, relationships, purpose, and community.

A healthier America requires looking beyond individual interventions and building environments where people can thrive.

  • Treatment works. People who receive timely, compassionate care for suicidal thoughts or behaviors can and do heal.
  • Recovery is not simply the absence of substance use — it is the active, ongoing pursuit of physical health, mental wellbeing, and emotional resilience; embracing the whole self is what makes recovery last.
  • The Science of Self-Care: Why Nutrition, Sleep, and Exercise Are Recovery Tools.
  • The fundamentals of physical health are also fundamentals of recovery. Research consistently shows that regular physical activity reduces cravings and improves mood, quality sleep supports emotional regulation and cognitive function, and balanced nutrition helps restore the body's natural systems disrupted by substance use. These are not optional add-ons to a recovery plan — they are evidence-based pillars of sustained wellness.
  • Mental Wellbeing Is Not Separate from Recovery — It Is Recovery.
  • Building a Life You Love Living — Wellbeing as the Foundation of Long-Term Recovery: When people in recovery have access to holistic wellness resources — from fitness and nutrition education to mental health services — they are not just surviving; they are building vibrant, grounded lives that make recovery worth protecting every day.

Every step toward wellness strengthens recovery.

Week 4 (September 21–25): Multiple Pathways to Recovery

The Great American Recovery is strengthened when people have access to a coordinated continuum of support.

  • Recovery is not one-size-fits-all.
  • Prevention, treatment, peer and recovery support services including recovery housing, mutual aid, employment services, faith communities, and other recovery support services all help people build healthy, fulfilling lives.
  • FDA-approved medications for substance use disorder are proven, life-saving tools that represent a legitimate and effective pathway to long-term recovery.
  • Geography should never determine access to recovery, and expanding rural recovery infrastructure means ensuring that every person, regardless of zip code, has a real pathway forward.
  • Tribal communities: Indigenous-led healing approaches, including traditional ceremonies, talking circles, and culture-based wellness practices, are powerful, sovereign pathways to recovery that deserve recognition, resources, and respect.
  • Unique Programs Spotlight: From arts-based healing to peer-run respite centers, innovative recovery programs across the country are expanding what recovery can look like.

Every pathway deserves dignity, support, and the opportunity to succeed.

Week 5 (September 28–30): Youth and Family in Recovery for The Future

The Great American Recovery invests in America's future by ensuring young people and families have access to recovery support that grows with them.

The goal is to build a nation where recovery can flourish.

  • Young people experience recovery in unique ways related to their age and social contexts. Supporting youth in recovery means recognizing who they are in the specific moments of their developing lives.
  • Young people are the future recovery movements. Youth peer-led advocacy, digital community building, and bold reimagining is what treatment and support can be.
  • Recovery programs such as recovery high schools, collegiate recovery communities, peer mentorship and other models that support youth in recovery create environments where young people can grow in their full selves in places that meet them where they are.
  • Relationships Matter: All young people learn to grow through their relationships in their families and friends. When families are supported and equipped with resources, they provide the foundation for a young person’s recovery journey.

Every young person deserves the opportunity to grow, thrive, and realize their full potential through recovery.

Webinars

Webinars throughout the month of September, Tuesdays at 1:00 p.m. ET

Recovery Together: Building Strong Recovery Supports through Connection, Collaboration, and Community
Tuesday, September 1, 1-2 p.m. ET
This webinar will explore how connecting people to the right services at the right time improves access to care, reduces barriers, and strengthens recovery outcomes.

Reducing Stigma Through Storytelling: Our Stories Have Power
Tuesday, September 8, 1-2 p.m. ET
In this webinar, participants will learn how to tell their story in an empowering and healing way, with the intent of reducing stigma, supporting prevention, effecting community change, and improving engagement with community services.

Whole Health & Wellness: Improving Mental Health and Physical Health as a Cornerstone of Recovery
Tuesday, September 15, 1-2 p.m. ET
This webinar will explore the science that supports practices that contribute to mental and emotional well-being.

Multiple Pathways of Recovery: Recovery Happens in Many Ways
Tuesday, September 22, 1-2 p.m. ET
Individuals achieve recovery through a variety of approaches that reflect their unique needs, experiences, values, cultures, and personal goals. This webinar explore how embracing multiple approaches helps create more inclusive and responsive recovery ecosystems.

Youth and Family Recovery for the Future
Tuesday, September 29, 1-2 p.m. ET
This webinar will explore emerging definitions of youth recovery as well as strategies that elevate youth voice, strengthen family engagement and family recovery; and expand youth and family peer support.

Faith Communities

Download more Resources for Faith Communities (PDF | 746 KB).

Download All Faith Communities

Special Observances

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Hashtag Guidance

National Recovery Month Hashtags

The hashtags below serve as a unifying thread for social media content related to Recovery Month and make it easy for people to find and follow the conversation. Feel free to use the following hashtags for your Recovery Month-related content:

  • #RecoveryMonth2026 (primary)
  • #RecoveryMonth
  • #GreatAmericanRecovery
  • #RecoveryIsREAL
  • #FaithAndRecovery    

Best Practices

  • Use Key Messages
    Lead every post with a real message. Don't just share the graphics. Try pairing them with the key messages we've provided. They're plain language, evidence-based, and ready to use as-is or adapted for your audience. That's exactly what they're there for.
  • Incorporate Weekly Themes
    September is organized into five weeks: Community & Connection, Reducing Stigma, Wellness, Multiple Pathways, and Youth in Recovery. When your posts align with the week's focus, they become part of a coordinated national conversation and not just one more post in a feed. Check the weekly themes before you build your calendar.
  • Tag SAMHSA
    When you tag us, your content reaches our networks too. That means more people see what you're sharing, and more people connect to the resources you're pointing them to.
  • Use the Hashtags: Start by putting #RecoveryMonth2026 on every post. This is the hashtag that ties the entire observance together: every partner, every platform, every week of September. Without it, your post stands alone. With it, you're part of something national. Don’t forget using our other official hashtags, including #RecoveryMonth2026, #RecoveryMonth, #RecoveryIsREAL, #GreatAmericanRecovery, #RURAL, #RecoverME and #FaithAndRecovery. These hashtags will help promote SAMHSA's key messages and make it easier for people to find and engage in conversation.
  • Promote Resources: Please promote our resources to share important information about recovery support for individuals, families, and communities living with or affected by substance use and mental health conditions.
  • Engage Faith and Community Partners: Communities of faith and faith-based organizations are trusted voices in the communities we serve. Share our faith-specific resources and encourage partners to carry RM 2026 messaging into their networks and community gatherings. 

Stickers

We hope you find these stickers helpful in engaging your audiences and promoting our shared mission.

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Virtual Backgrounds

The Virtual Backgrounds are designed to enhance your virtual events, meetings, and social media content throughout the month. They aim to promote recovery support and normalize conversations around recovery and wellness.

Download All Virtual Backgrounds

Email Signatures

Use the Recovery Month email signature template throughout September in all email correspondence to promote awareness and build brand recognition of the observance.

Download All Email Signatures

Logo

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Additional Resources

Recovery Month is more than a campaign; it is a national invitation. Join the Great American Recovery by sharing hope, supporting recovery, reducing stigma, and helping build communities where every person has the opportunity to thrive. Because recovery strengthens families, communities, and our nation. Recovery is possible for everyone.

Last Updated: 08/21/2026
Source: https://www.samhsa.gov/about/digital-toolkits/recovery-month