The original and best workbook

The core of my recovery, that has worked for me and many others, is to work the Steps with a sponsor.  In essence, I found someone who had what I wanted - long-term relief from the obsessive problems that beset me, peace in their life, a smile on their face - and I decided to do whatever they did.  I asked them to sponsor me, I asked what they did, and then I followed their directions to the best of my ability.

I am absolutely certain that I would not have had these great 14 years of my life if I had tried to do it on my own with a workbook, no matter how good the workbook was.  My head was simply too screwed up to follow directions without help.  There was something powerful in surrendering myself to the path of someone else, that got me out of myself and out of my own desperate need to control everything.

The best workbook that I've used is the original text Alcoholics Anonymous, coupled with the direct advice and help of my sponsor, who also used that book.  The best way that any of my sponsors used was to go through the AA Big Book very carefully and to do exactly what it says they did.  Sometimes, that meant sessions of reading just one sentence and then stopping to go off and do what it said.  That has worked for me.

Now, if my sponsor told me to go get a particular workbook ... then I'd be buying that puppy just as fast as I could.  But so far, I haven't had a sponsor tell me to do that.  So as a sponsor, I don't tell sponsees to do that either.