Alcoholics have a 12-step programme to tackle their addiction, drug addicts too, and now there is one for those addicted to email.

Forget the mantra “I am so and so and I am an alcoholic”, the new programme will have people admitting that email is managing them rather than the other way round, and will help them to tackle their obsession for reading or replying to emails on holiday, in the car and even in the bathroom.

A life coach for business executives in America devised the plan for cases such as a golfer who checked his BlackBerry after every shot and lost a potential client who thought he was a socially-inept obsessive. Marsha Egan said email misuse could cost businesses millions of pounds in lost productivity.

One of her clients could not walk by a computer — her own or anyone else’s — without checking for messages. Another had 3,600 emails in his inbox.

Others wait for emails and send themselves a message if one hasn’t shown up for several minutes, she claimed.

Research by King’s College London says addiction to email is doubly worrying because such technology depletes cognitive abilities more rapidly than drugs.

Email users suffered a 10 per cent drop in IQ scores, more than twice the fall recorded by marijuana users.