Johann Sebastian Bach wrote his "Coffee Cantata" - about a father who objects to his daughter's penchant for the beverage - that has her singing "I must have my coffee." Voltaire was said to consume more than 50 cups a day. In America, the Boston Tea Party transformed coffee into the national drink.

The most documented account of coffee addiction came from the pen of Honoré de Balzac, who lovingly examined the beverage in his classic "The Pleasures and Pain of Coffee."

"Coffee is a great power in my life," Balzac wrote. "I have observed its effects on an epic scale."

He compared the effects of coffee to "sparks shooting all the way up to the brain." He championed coffee for everyone. Here's how it affected his writing: "Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination's orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink."

He has but one caveat: "As everybody knows, coffee only makes boring people even more boring."

Balzac died at 51, his stomach riddled with disease then attributed to his coffee addiction.

The new Finnish study notwithstanding, how could you overcome your coffee addiction if you chose to? Some doctors will advise you to switch to tea, or a few cups of hot water a day.

I tried to stop my five-a-day coffee habit recently and ended up with a range of dreary side effects - three weeks of jitters and a sluggish brain. Eventually, my natural stimulus system came back to life after years of suppression by caffeine, and I functioned just about normally again.

Like all addicts, though, I craved my demon and was gradually re-addicted. Thus, I was as delighted as everyone else to learn from "Stroke" that I could - and perhaps should - be drinking even more coffee.

The coffee marketers must be celebrating - perhaps this time with Irish coffee.

Michael Johnson is a journalist based in Bordeaux and former media director of Burson-Marsteller, London.