The first step is admitting you have a problem

Do you feel the need to constantly refresh your inbox? Are you clicking the send/receive button as often as you blink? It’s a major problem from which I’m sure many of my collogues suffer – email addiction.

Well, fear not my Gmail junkies and Hotmailheads. Say goodbye to those Yahoo yearnings, now there’s something to help: the new 12-step program for email addicts.

The first of the 12 steps is "admit that e-mail is managing you. Let go of your need to check e-mail every 10 minutes."

Every 10 minutes? Fuck that, I check email every 2 minutes. Or more. I’m ALWAYS checking my email. But I don’t see it as a major problem. And, whatever, I mean, I can totally quit whenever I want.

I guess I’m still in the denial stage. Perhaps it would help if I shared the story of my own personal struggle with email addiction...

It started out innocently enough, I got a Hotmail account in college. I used it to stay in touch with my long-distance friends, checking my inbox in the computer labs maybe once or twice a day. But after I graduated, I got my own computer, and I found myself spending more and more time on email, writing long messages to people I didn’t even like.

They say Hotmail is a transition service; it leads to the use of other, more hardcore email providers. And they’re right. Soon I created a Yahoo account, and before I knew it... I was on Gmail. Using it multiple times an hour. It all went downhill from there. I had more email addresses than I knew what to do with. I couldn’t remember my passwords for all of them NOR the answers to my personal security questions. What was my first pet’s name? I DON’T KNOW, GODDAMIT! I JUST DON’T KNOW!

Soon I found myself on the streets, begging for spare change to use in seedy Internet cafés. All I needed was to see an unread message in my inbox... I’d do anything for another email hit. I would lie, cheat, steal. Before I knew it, I was giving handjobs in parked cars in exchange for five minutes with someone’s Blackberry. If there was an attachment or video link, I’d throw in a blowjob.

That’s when I knew I’d hit rock bottom. I checked myself into the nearest email rehab facility, started going to meetings, and my life has been different ever since. Now when will they develop one of these programs for G-chat?