Dealing with a dry drunk - Al-Anon Family Group

Reconstructing · Newbie

Dealing with a dry drunk

hotrod · ~*Service Worker*~

Welcome to Alanon Re.

To answer your question, we recommend that you get to alanon face to face meetings and learn to slowly focus on yourself.

Help with finding local meetings near where you live may be found at the following web site: http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/meetings/meeting.html Or call: 1-888-4alanon

Online meetings are held in the Al-Anon chat room associated with this site.

From the board click on Al-Anon Group Meeting/Chat Room in the yellow box in upper left of the page. After clicking on the link please be patient, sometimes it takes a while for the window to open.

Living with the disease of alcoholism effects every member of te family so that we all require help in recovering.

Alanon had provided me with the tools to live life on life's terms and to find serenity and peace even when I was living in a hostile and insane environment.

I found that I needed to learn to focus entirely on my self and take actions to improve my emotional health.
The alanon tools I used were:

Daily reading of alanon literture
Daily meetings
Living one day at a time
Refusing to project to the future or regret the past
Daily making a list of all I was grateful for.

That was enough to keep me busy for a number of months.
Please keep coming back You are worth it.

dori711 · Veteran Member

Please forgive me for not knowing the term. guess I haven't looked through the replies enough to learn, but what is a "dry drunk"?

Christy · ~*Service Worker*~

reconstructing (love the name).,

We do the same as if they were drinking..
To be able to deal with it we "reconsruct" our attitudes and have responses instead of reactions.
....and all the things hotrod mentioned :)

Dori,
a dry drunk is someone that is not drinking but has not sought any type of recovery and still has the active drunk behaviors.

hotrod · ~*Service Worker*~

Dori

I checked the AA links and found a good defination of Dry Drunk. It states:

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. Or in the second case what was once someone abstinent and on a progressive path of recovery has slowly returned to chaotic and unrealistic thinking.

2nd Being active in your addiction sets up many trains of thought, attitudes, feelings, and actions that are problematic. 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,

dori711 · Veteran Member

Betty, thanks, but what is referred for the time in between drinks? Can that be considered as a dry drunk..My husband is drinking in the evenings and is miserable during the day until the drinking starts. On Saturdays it starts in the afternoon and goes until pass out time.

Gee, if that's the definition of a dry drunk, it must be awful for them, locked in with all their misery, they must be in their own hell without a crutch to stand on.

Mattie · ~*Service Worker*~

No, a dry drunk is someone who is not drinking at all at that time. Many drinkers do spend part of the day not drinking, but they're not "dry" as dry is defined. So if he's actively drinking most days, he's a drinker, and it sounds like a problem drinker.

Do get to some meetings. They are wonderful resources.

The material presented here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method to exchange information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal level.