NaCl has been investigated as a low-cost optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) material for retrospective dosimetry and radiation emergency assessment. Its OSL response is closely related to the formation of charge trapping defects and radiative recombination centers. However, previous studies on NaCl-based OSL materials have mainly relied on conventional doping, sintering, or crystal-growth methods, while non-equilibrium modification routes capable of simultaneously introducing impurity centers and irradiation-induced defects remain insufficiently explored. In this work, NaCl:Cu ceramics were prepared by Cu ion implantation followed by annealing, and the effects of Cu implantation on the crystal structure, luminescence behavior, and OSL dose response were investigated. NaCl ceramic discs were fabricated by pressing and sintering NaCl powder, implanted with 40 keV Cu ions at a fluence of 2×10¹⁴ ions/cm², and annealed at 250 ℃ in high-purity Ar. Micro-area X-ray diffraction (XRD), photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy, and OSL measurements after 6 MV X-ray irradiation were used to characterize the samples. The XRD results show that the implanted samples retain the rock-salt NaCl main phase, without detectable crystalline Cu or Cu oxide secondary phases within the XRD detection limit. A slight shift of the diffraction peaks toward higher angles suggests that Cu implantation and subsequent annealing affect the local lattice environment, probably through Cu introduction, implantation-induced point defects, local strain, and defect reconstruction. Under 250 nm excitation, two obvious PL emissions appear at 359 nm and 440 nm, indicating the presence of at least two different local luminescent environments. The 359 nm emission is more likely associated with relatively isolated Cu⁺ centers, whereas the broad 440 nm band is tentatively attributed to Cu-associated complex centers influenced by implantation-induced defects, possibly including Cl vacancies, F-type color centers, local strain, and low-symmetry coordination environments. These defect-related structures may contribute to charge trapping, whereas Cu-related centers are likely to participate in radiative recombination during the OSL process. The NaCl:Cu ceramics show an estimated minimum detectable dose of approximately 209 μGy and a good linear OSL dose response in the range of 0-3 Gy, with R² = 0.999. At higher doses, the response gradually deviates from linearity and tends toward saturation. The OSL signal can be effectively erased by optical bleaching: after 1 min of bleaching, the residual signal decreases to about 1.0% of the initial value, and after 5 min it approaches the background level. Repeated irradiation-readout-bleaching tests demonstrate good reproducibility and intra-batch consistency. These results demonstrate that Cu ion implantation combined with annealing provides a feasible non-equilibrium strategy for regulating local defect structures and Cu-related luminescence centers in NaCl ceramics, thereby offering an experimental basis for the development of low-cost NaCl-based OSL dosimetric materials.