The unhelpful absurdity of the “Dry Drunk” narrative

No, “Dry Drunk Syndrome” is not a medically recognized condition.

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A few nights ago, I was scrolling through my phone in bed when I saw a headline that made me roll my eyes so melodramatically that I banged my skull on the headboard. It was a standard clickbait headline about watching out for symptoms of a specific ‘syndrome.’ In this case, it was ‘Dry Drunk Syndrome.’

The reason I’m writing this with a lump on the back of my head is because ‘Dry Drunk Syndrome’ isn’t a real thing. You won’t find it in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and an Internet search of the term will likely take you to the websites of expensive rehabs, implying that their treatment center can innoculate you from it. A search for the term ‘dry drunk’ on Pubmed—The National Library of Medicine’s database of more than 37 million citations for biomedical literature—yields exactly two results: one an unavailable paper from 1955; the other a letter to the editor of the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1994 asking if “dry drunk syndrome” should be considered a subtype of depression. 

What people mean when they use the term “dry drunk”

Like most people familiar with the concept, I first heard the term ‘dry drunk’ in an AA meeting*. A dry drunk, I was told, is someone who is technically sober—as in they’ve stopped drinking—but hasn’t addressed the underlying issues that contributed to their alcohol use. When referenced in the context of 12-step groups, a dry drunk is a sober person not in AA or who is not “working the [12] steps.” 

I was warned that a dry drunk lives perilously on the precipice of relapse, unmoored from the necessary tools to build “real” sobriety. The first time this archetype was described to me, I was still new enough to recovery that I didn’t see someone claiming to be the authority on “real” sobriety as the huge red flag that it is. 

I’ll be the first to admit that sustained recovery from alcohol addiction typically involves more than just abstaining from alcohol. Not drinking is a great start, but there are often deeper issues that propel one’s addiction. Issues that—if unaddressed—can be triggering to the now-sober individual. For me, those were PTSD, depression, and anxiety—a Sad Girl trifecta of mental health disorders. Once I got sober, I was in a better position to work with a therapist, take antidepressants, and attend AA meetings—all things that would ultimately help me figure out how to live as the sober, functional human being I was so unaccustomed to embodying. 

The concept behind the phrase “dry drunk” is valid—simply cutting out alcohol may not be enough for a person to maintain their sobriety or feel like they are undergoing a holistic process of recovery. I have no qualms with anyone who wants to refer to their past or present self as a dry drunk. Most of the time, however, the term isn’t used self-referentially. Most of the time, it’s used to pass judgment on others’ sobriety. 

Given that some definitions of a dry drunk are specific to a sober person who is not currently an active member of AA, I’ll use myself as an example: I haven’t picked up a drink in over 15 years—and I’ve worked hard to maintain that sobriety through a turbulent decade and a half. Some of that work has been more visible than other parts. It was visible to my local 12-step community when I was in AA. I did other work privately with a therapist and psychiatrist, as well as on my own. 

While it may be a colloquialism that describes a real (though highly subjective phenomenon), ‘dry drunk’ necessarily implies a value judgment of a person’s sobriety—likely based on incomplete information. 

Dry Drunk Syndrome

Because “Dry Drunk Syndrome” is not a formally recognized ‘syndrome,’ I was astonished to find that WebMD—everyone’s favorite ‘Am I dying?’ website—has an actual page discussing it. Written by “Web MD Editorial Contributors” and medically reviewed by Carol DerSarkissian, an emergency room physician, the article lists the following as “symptoms of dry drunk syndrome:”

• Wanting to be the center of attention

• Feeling like you're always the victim

• Having trouble communicating with other people 

• Mood swings that range from depression to extreme happiness

• Fear that you can't change

• Anger and resentment towards family and friends who intervened in your drinking

• Frustration over time wasted due to your alcohol abuse

• Believing that sobriety is boring 

• Romanticizing past substance abuse

• Not acknowledging the problems your substance abuse caused

• Feeling jealous of people who are showing signs of healthy recovery

• Believing you always know what's best

• Refusing to accept constructive criticism

Find me a person in early recovery who has not met most of those criteria at one point or another. Even people who don’t have an underlying mental health disorder experience profound mood swings, feelings of regret, rejection sensitivity, and a host of other emotions in early sobriety. That is undoubtedly part of the work of recovery. But to equate those very natural experiences with someone who is only technically sober, to pathologize their emotional ups and downs into a “syndrome” is counterproductive. Yes, recovery is about more than just not drinking. But not drinking is a HUGE part of recovery, and I don’t think anyone is particularly well served by belittling it. 

*I was looking for the origins of the phrase “dry drunk,” and while most websites claim it was “coined by the creator of Alcoholics Anonymous” (presumably Bill Wilson, though I suppose it could be his co-founder, Dr. Bob), I can’t find a primary source where either founder uses the term. It doesn’t appear in the Big Book, nor the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. The first description I can find of someone outlining (at least one interpretation of) the Dry Drunk archetype is in a book published several years before AA was founded, The Common Sense of Drinking by Richard Peabody. 

In the book, Peabody describes, “A man who is on the wagon may be sober physically, but mentally he may be almost as alcohol-minded as if he were drunk. He is sorry for himself (a disastrous state of mind for anybody to be in), and he is envious of his drinking friends. He is constantly wondering if he cannot find an excuse for ‘falling off,’ and he is daydreaming of how happy and lucky he will be when the days of abstinence are finished.” 

This is similar to how the Big Book describes the archetype, but neither uses the phrase “dry drunk.” If anyone knows where I can find the primary source where the term is first used, my little librarian heart would be so happy if you could clue me in.

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I’m not a doctor or mental health professional, so my advice shouldn’t be construed as medical or therapeutic. You are free to take or leave it.