It's not an AA term, it has just been coined by folks at AA. A dry drunk, i heard this over 2 decades ago and no-one in my family and earlier friends ever went to AA. It means a person who has simply just stopped drinking without making any other lifestyle or thought changes. The person is almost, in effect, forcing themselves to abstein without really having the real desire to do so themselves, a newer term for me is white knuckling. My father was a dry drunk and it is a very apt label.