Nice to hear how it has all turned out well for you, though statistically you now count as one of AA's failures I suppose.
I read your op and thought your reaction to AA was similar to mine when there was a certain amount of coercion involved. I was in the nut farm at 21, and we had a compulsory meeting each week. I was open to the idea, but I missed the point. Somehow whatever they were trying to tell me just went straight over my head. It didn't make sense to me.
I stayed sober a couple of months after that, progressively getting more and more fearful, and eventually drank. That relapse lasted about a year, and at the end f it, almost at death's door, that AA message started to make sense.
I did wonder why you think some people would call you a dry drunk? I have seen plenty of people attend AA for a while and then go back to normal lives without AA, and a surprising number of them do just fine.
I try to remember that AA is really for a very specific type of drunk, my type. My type seem to require a lot more than some meetings to straighten out.
I see in your post you also did meetings but not steps, a common enough thing. People tell you you might die of you stop meetings. In one sense that might be true but that idea has nothing to do with the AA program.
Perhaps because of the guidance you received you never got to try the program. Maybe your life would have changed like mine did. But on the other hand, I would not have survuved without the steps, and you seem to be doing just fine.
I suppose the conclusion I might draw is either that we are different types of alcoholic, or having got sober by different means, the type of life we got may be quite different.