Honoré de Balzac’s Coffee Frenzy
French novelist Honoré de Balzac famously powered through 90-page writing sprints on an industrial dose of caffeine: up to 50 cups of Turkish coffee per day. He claimed coffee “chases away weariness” and “sparks rebellious flashes of spirit,” but he often skipped the cup entirely—chewing straight coffee grounds for a quicker hit.
The result was feverish productivity: Balzac published more than 90 novels, yet suffered crippling stomach cramps and terrifying heart palpitations. He joked about vibrating through Paris streets, but colleagues described him as “perpetually wide-eyed and sweating.” When doctors begged him to slow down, he downed another pot and wrote an essay praising coffee’s “mighty power.” Balzac’s jittery legacy warns modern hustlers that there’s a thin line between grind culture and literal grinding of your innards.
