Please and Thank You

I came to AA hungover, emotionally mangled, and on the worst day of my life. I couldn't control my drinking but I didn't believe initially that the sobriety AAs were talking about could be what I needed. Maybe I was an alcoholic, but I wasn't like them. I didn't know it then but I was using what Herbert Spencer so accurately describes as the principle of contempt prior to investigation. "Hell, I'll probably even fail at AA," I thought. "But no one will be able to say I didn't try."