A "dry drunk" is someone who is an admitted alcoholic, does not go to meeting after having been exposed to AA, then goes on to live life without a drink and does NOT work the AA program.
In other words, they have quit drinking but have done nothing to change the person they were while drinking. It can be something obvious (anger, depression, etc) or something less obvious.
A "dry drunk" is not easy to quantify unless you have had a lot of experience with the person and know the person personally.
Actually the book refers to it in another manner. It talks about the nature of the alcholic mind. The story of the man on a business trip who decides it is a good idea to have a whiskey with milk in it, the director who insists that everyone do things his way and only his way.
I have seen dry drunks who go to meetings and are still so grandiose that they must bring their’posse’ with them wherever they go. They always having a ‘burning desire’ to talk and when asked to limit their comments to X number of minutes they most always go 2.5X.
Did George Bush admit to being an “alcoholic”? Or did he just say he drank too much at one period of his life?
I think AA just wants to keep their membership up so they invented this term.