Would not drink it if not for the caffeine.

The history of coffee is interesting to me. Although I don’t have a link, coffee was introduced to addict populations to facilitate trade. It’s funny that trading companies were key to the adoption of tea and coffee consumptions so they had a commodity that they could trade across the world. It’s kind of like oil in that the world needs lots of it and there’s money to be made in production and transport.

Or it could be that people just really like tea and coffee and the trading companies just met the unrealized need.

That's a bit of a stretch. You could say that about any popular products - smartphones, soap, ...

Some say the industrial revolution was facilitated by the switch of Western people from alcohol based drinks to caffeine based ones.

> Those who drank coffee instead of alcohol began the day alert and stimulated, rather than relaxed and mildly inebriated, and the quality and quantity of their work improved … Western Europe began to emerge from an alcoholic haze that had lasted for centuries.”