Gardener, my opinion is that you can be a dry drunk either with or without AA. One of my family members is not a dry drunk, but I feel my X is. By that, I mean he is very prone basically constantly prone to addictive behaviors.
He conquered his drinking/drugs addiction, but displayed addictive behavior since then. He would become addicted to billiards (had to play every day even went in the day they were closed as he became friends with the pool hall owner). Then triathlons, running, kayaking/canoeing, and then OW was also an addiction for him. I prob. can't explain it very well, but I can see how it is generally not a good thing to be in an addictive state throughout your life, and so may need to be addressed in addition to just the drinking. For example, one could displace their drinking addiction with gambling and that may be just as problematic. I think that may be common dry drunk behavior, and I would agree that kind of problem should be looked at, or I think the person would/will have continued problems at points in their life regardless of whether they use AA or some other method of recovery.
