Dry drunk is a term to describe an alcoholic or drug addict’s behaviors when they’ve stopped using their substance but their behaviors don’t seem to improve.

The following is a guest post by Bill Urell who has been in recovery for 16 years. Bill works as an addictions therapist at a leading residential treatment center, has written a book and is the author of over 70 articles on various topics concerning addiction recovery. Currently, he specialize in working with older adults who have chemical dependency and writes the blog, Addiction Recovery Basics.

Dry Drunk | An In Depth Explanation Of The Dry Drunk In Recovery by Bill Urell

Dry drunk is a slang expression which describes a person who no longer drinks or drugs but is still behaving in a dysfunctional way.

What is a dry drunk, and the ‘dry drunk syndrome’ as it is sometimes called? It can best be described as someone who fits one of two conditions:

1. The first is someone who has given up drinking and drugging and not made any internal or emotional changes, they stay the same but the substance is gone.
2. Or in the second case, someone who once was abstinent and on a progressive path of recovery, but has slowly returned to chaotic and unrealistic thinking, which may be leading back toward relapse.

Being active in your addiction, sets up many trains of thought, attitudes, feelings, and actions that are destructive. Simply removing the alcohol or drugs without changing these underlying factors will produce a ‘dry drunk syndrome’. The dry drunk really refers to a condition and not the person.

It is important to recognize a reversion back to our old ways of thinking and acting, or lack of progress in moving forward in recovery.The dry drunk can be a precursor to the beginnings of relapse. The AA Big Book describes this condition as being “restless, irritable, and discontented”. This set of attitudes can apply to anyone who is chemically dependent, or even those were not.

A way of looking at the dry drunk syndrome is that it generates two distinct dangers to our recovery:

1. Dangerous attitudes and mental postures that exist or can develop in a person who has not worked on “underlying issues”, or move forward growing in recovery.

If left unchecked or unresolved…

2. These can result in certain sobriety threatening actions or behaviors.

Here are some of the attitudes and mental postures common with the dry drunk syndrome.

Superiority –

Superiority or grandiosity basically means a return to a self-centered, ‘the world revolves around’ me attitude. Chemically dependent people are self centered in the extreme. The key component here is that with grandiosity you are setting yourself up to be the center of attention, either superior to everyone around you, or by playing the victim. Either way, you’re separating yourself and putting distance between yourself and from the people and world around you.  You’re really saying I am not like you; the implication is that I am unique and rules don’t apply to me.  In the 12 step programs they call this believing that I am ‘terminally unique’. The belief that I am so unique, it will eventually kill me. It does not have to necessarily mean that I believe I am the best; it can also be seeking attention through playing the victim or sitting on the pity pot (being inferior).

Impulsivity –

Possibly one of the most common attitudes or observable behaviors of people with addiction problems is poor impulse control and impatience. We tend to do what we want, when we want, with little regard for self harm or hurting others around us. Impulsivity can be linked with grandiosity to engage in behaviors designed to make us the center of attention. Another common feature of impulsivity and lack patience has to do with time frames. We want and expect things to happen within our own time frame. Unfortunately, the time frame we impose on ourselves and others is often quite unrealistic. We expect instant gratification in all areas of our lives. Let’s face it drugs and alcohol work almost instantly, we have conditioned ourselves like Pavlov’s dog, to expect immediate rewards. Unfortunately things don’t happen that way. I heard the phrase “time takes time” so often in early recovery that I wanted to punch somebody in the nose. (No resentments there!).

Being judgmental –

This is a very destructive attitude for people in recovery. When we judge a person as being better than or less than, we are setting up a situation where we inflate our egos feeling better than other people. On the other hand, if we judge ourselves to be on the short end of the comparison, we can feel bitter and generate low self-esteem. Being judgmental is a low self-esteem generator. There is another aspect of being judgmental they can be very defeatist in nature. That is the fact that if we are busy judging other people, and taking their inventories, we are not paying attention to ourselves. Not only that, but we could be judging ourself as the success standard. Who are we to say we are always right? First thought wrong.

Whenever I caught myself being judgmental, I used when I called my centering thought: I am always in the middle. There are people richer than me and poorer than me. There are people smarter than me, and not so smart as me. There are people with junkier cars than mine, and there are people with nicer cars than mine. so, knowing that, I’m always in the middle. What’s the point comparing? Anyway, it works for me.

Complacency –

This is not only an attitude of somebody in dry drunk syndrome, but is a red flag, warning whistle, fireworks shooting, warning sign of someone who is well into the relapse process. An important facet of being in active recovery is just that, being active, and moving forward. It is not how fast you are going but rather the direction in which you are headed. If you become lazy or disinterested and stop being proactive about your recovery, the natural tendency is to fall back into addictive behaviors. Your re-engagement in them is just a short step away.

Once you are lured into any of these attitudes, they start to affect how you think. Once your thinking is affected and you start to buy into self-centered thoughts, chances are you’ll engage in the actions stemming from these self-centered thoughts.

I look at my sobriety and recovery as being always on the move. I am either moving toward a drink and drug, or away from a drug and drink. The key is that left alone, and not moving forward in recovery we are actually sliding toward using. It’s like parking a car on a hill, sooner or later the brakes will give out before that hill flattens out.
I wonder sometimes if complacency is not rooted in laziness, but rather than fear. Are we afraid of success? Are we afraid of failure? Are we just sitting around waiting for things to work out the way we want them to without putting the effort into it?

Becoming Very Negative

I was guilty of this for quite some time in my recovery. I kept asking “when do the good things start happening? Is this all here is?” If negativity sets in, it is real important to look what going on beneath the surface. Is it anger and resentments; is some person place or thing not working out the way you expect it? Could be excessive anxiety and worry setting in?

Possibly one of the most futile of all emotions is worry and anxiety because you’re focusing on what may or may not happen in the future. I do not know any people that are true fortune tellers or can see into the future. Being in a state of high stress or anxiety can consume all of your mental energy. I really don’t think it’s possible to be happy, serene and peaceful what being in a state of high stress and anxiety.

Here are some destructive behaviors and actions that can result from dry drunk thinking:

1. We become restless and irritable and discontent.

Little things start to annoy us. We start to look for differences in those around us, which causes separation. If you remember, this is actually the first stage in the relapse process. It is also is the trickiest because we cannot see it coming. If we do not have a support system of people around us who we freely gave permission to offer us feedback, we could be a world of trouble. Sometimes we are to even aware that we’re acting cranky until somebody pointed out to us.

2. We become bored, dissatisfied

We are easily distracted from productive tasks. I visualize this as having the vivid color go out of recovery. Nothing excites us anymore. This can be likened to returning to Earth from ‘the Pink Cloud’. The initial euphoria when the colors were brighter, the sounds were clearer, and the smells were more fragrant, has dulled into listlessness and a ‘so what’ attitude and perception. We can start to wonder about the whole point of becoming sober and staying that way. This is the time start a gratitude list. If we become unable to see the progress we’re making in recovery, or we start taking it for granted, is very easy for sobriety too lose its priority.

It is my firm is belief that for those in long-term recovery, complacency is the biggest demon we must fight. On the flip side, I believe the most viable asset one can have in recovery is persistence.  When things get rolling along and life seems to be working well, the temptation is to lose focus on maintaining our recovery. A parallel is that many people stop taking their medicine because they’re feeling better, and then wonder why they get sick again.

3. Our emotions and feelings either get listless and dull or we start overreacting.

Either we become emotionally dull or dead or we go hyper or ballistic. The key point here it is that our reactions are out of proportion to the event that caused them. Perhaps, an occurrence that happens every day suddenly sends us into a rage. This can enter the realm of misplaced or misdirected anger or other emotional venting. At this point it is a very good idea to seek some emotional support and get realistic feedback as to your progress. Let’s face it, in recovery and in life there are highs and lows, ups and downs. Maybe these are starting to feel a little more dramatic because we are not using drugs and alcohol to anesthetize ourselves any longer. This may sound corny but we do learn more from our mistakes that are successes. Pain can be a great motivator.

4. We start to the engage in ‘euphoric recall’

Euphoric recall is a real fancy way of saying we only remember the good times. We remember how much fun we had when we’re using, how much more social we were, how clever, witty, and handsome or beautiful.  It really is a journey into the fantasy land of the past.  At the same time we’re engaging in this selective recall of only the good times, another mind game is actually being played. We’re consciously or unconsciously choosing not remember all the pain and misery. We tend to ‘forget’ things like making a fool of ourselves at a party, throwing up all over the place, waking up in strange beds,(or other places), and not having memory of the night before. The best antidote for euphoric recall that I know of is simply to sit down with a piece of paper and make two columns: one for the good things that happened to me when I was using and the second to list the bad things that happened to me when I was using. Make a list. Look at it. Endgame.

5. We start to engage in magical thinking

We get unrealistic and magical expectations and fanciful dreams. This is kind of similar to euphoric recall but is not necessarily confined to the past. Magical thinking can involve unrealistic expectations, and unreasonable goals, and simply believing that things will occur if we wish for them aren’t enough. And example might be if I stay sober my girlfriend will come back to me or I’ve been good so long just one drink won’t hurt. My favorite example of the slide into magical thinking is the following sentence, just fill in the blanks.

It wasn’t____________( drugs, alcohol) that was my problem, it was____________ ( my job, my husband, my anxiety).

If you’re going down that road run, don’t walk, to someone who can remove that magical thinking and give your realistic perspective on how it really was.

Another great example that happened to me was this: I was driving down the road with my best friend in sponsor and started talking about the past by stating, in all sincerity:
“I wasn’t really all that bad.” my friend pulled off the road looked me right in the face, straight in the eyes and said “Yes Bill you were”. Then he started driving again.
That took the wind right out of my sails, brought me back to reality, and I never brought up the subject again.

6. We lose interest in self-improvement.

There’s a fine line between becoming peaceful and serene and, and becoming complacent and lazy. What happened to all those plans for a ‘new you’? Instead of doing more walking the walk we’re doing a lot more talking the talk. The ‘action’ part of the program seems to have deserted us. We have lost the momentum driving us forward in our recovery. We’re content to sit back on our laurels letting other people do the work and simply sit back and receive praise for how well we’re doing.  This is where it is very important to have a sense of reality, and a purpose and some goals and life.

7. We start to become unfulfilled

As a result of any combination of the points already discussed, a feeling of not having our dreams fulfilled can come into play. Many people have an idea that just becoming abstinent will solve all problems. Don’t get me wrong, stopping the use of drugs and alcohol can only improve things. However, there is a good chance that there is a lot of wreckage in the past that will take time to get cleaned up and resolved. This starts to move into the realm of having unrealistic expectations and time frames. We want things to happen quickly. But, without action and continual self-improvement, not much will change.

8. We start acting on our old defense mechanisms

We are not only thinking in terms of old attitudes and thought processes, now we’re starting to act on them. The walls, supports, and the barriers that we erected to support our drinking and drugging are starting to be acted on it again. Things like minimizing, rationalizing, and denial start to become real again. We start acting like we’re bulletproof, and infallible and our recovery. All that’ recovery stuff’ is for other people, on doing quite well without it think you very much.

Looking back at the list of attitudes, thought distortions and actions or behaviors they can generate, it is easy to see how the dry drunk syndrome is simply nothing more then reverting back to the way it was when we were active in our use.

If you are starting to notice some of the attitudes discussed creeping back into your life, it is time to start paying attention to the possibility of relapse and start turning your life in sobriety and recovery around. The ‘dry drunk syndrome’ is a bright red flashing warning sign for relapse.