What exactly is a "dry drunk?' For gimpalomg.....?

Answer 1

Originally, it meant what the first person said.

Since then, members of Alcoholics Anonymous use this term as a slur and use it for anyone that quit drinking without using the 12steps. They do not consider people "sober" if they do not follow the program of AA and refer to such people as "dry drunks".

The flip side of this, if a person does not exhibit these traits and is successful in quitting drinking, AA members will claim that the person was never a "real alcoholic". A real alcoholic, in their eyes, is someone who is still drinking or a person that has stopped using the AA program.

"When positive spirituality dominates our lives, we have no need to alter our moods with addictive substances or behaviors. ... The opposite is true for active alcoholics and sober but nonrecovering alcoholics referred to in AA as "dry drunks." Their lives are dominated by a negative spirituality."
"Spirituality: The key to recovery from alcoholism", Robert D. Warfield and Marc B. Goldstein, Counseling & Values, April 1996, Vol. 40, Issue 3, page 196.


AA uses a lot of lot of loaded language to support it's claims of being the only way to quit drinking.

Answer 2

A dry drunk: term usually used to describe a person who is no longer drinking but still has the same issues as a drunk. Can be that the person is obnoxious, or argumentative, or hostile, or any other of things that people are when they drink Just because the person isn't drinking doesn't mean that he/she has dealt with the problems associated with drinking.