The star of the longest running movie series in history may be an expert shooter, precise code cracker and death-defying spy, but James Bond is also a serious alcoholic, according to a new study.
The University of Otago, Wellington research, ‘Licence to swill: James Bond’s drinking over six decades’ published in the Medical Journal of Australia, reports 007 fits the criteria for having a severe alcohol use disorder.
“The dangerous things he does after drinking are fast driving to escape enemies, flying helicopters, operating complex machinery, actually tackling a range of dangerous animals that are in his way and he has sex with enemies who try to kill him.. even sex for James Bond after drinking is quite hazardous,” Professor Nick Wilson said.
"He's even done things like blow up a nuclear complex and escape amazingly difficult situations all single handed after drinking.”
Professor Wilson said an advantage of the study was seeing consistent evidence of heavy drinking in the 24 movies from 1962 to 2015, where as in real life people often don’t tell the truth about their drinking habits.
"I was pretty shocked when he drank those six vespers in a row, that's 24 units (of alcohol) so that is a level which would be fatal to many people,” Professor Wilson said.
The researchers estimated that after drinking that number of martinis, Bond would have a blood alcohol level of 0.36g/dL.
Professor Wilson said while the study is light-hearted, it carries serious elements about a hero being a binge-drinker when society has alcohol issues.
“The amount of alcohol product placement seems to go up every decade so Bond is surrounded by more and more alcohol brands and his hazardous drinking behaviour has definitely not declined in anyway, in fact he's drinking more different types of drinks as well.”
He said Bond has stopped smoking so he isn’t giving up hope he will change his drinking habits in the next instalment, due out in 2020.
“Maybe he'll be vaping, we don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
The researchers are advising Bond to seek professional help for his problem and are calling on his workplace, MI6, to change their drinking culture and increase support for Bond.
“He does so many things on his own, it should really be more of a team effort to take some of the burden off him as an individual.
“His workplace should realise that he's at high risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, I mean he's been tortured, he kills lots of people, so for any normal person that would be a big psychological burden,” he said.
‘The Music is Bond’ producer and James Bond fan Tim Beveridge said while there are health and safety issues with drinking on the job, other risky activity Bond involves himself in also carries safety issues.
“Not many people have that job description, if he has a couple of drinks to wind down at the end of the day or to get into action, than, what the hey?
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