Dr. Indra Neil Guha, a liver specialist, and his colleagues at Nottingham University Hospital in England spent a year poring over Ian Fleming's James Bond books and tabulating how many drinks the suave spy drank a day.Their conclusion? Even just steadying his Walther PPK might have been difficult for Bond.
On average, Bond consumed about 45 drinks a week, or six to seven a day, the authors wrote Thursday in the Christmas edition of BMJ, formerly the British Medical Journal. That's way more than the amount considered risky for men by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
It wasn't just chronic drinking that roughed up Bond's liver. He also went on some mean benders. In Casino Royale, Bond knocked back nearly 20 drinks before going on a high-speed car chase, getting in a wreck and then spending two weeks in the hospital. "We hope that this was a salutary lesson," the authors wrote dryly.
"This man clearly consumed what are considered to be harmful amounts of alcohol," says psychiatrist Peter Martin, who directs the Vanderbilt Addiction Center. "There are data that show that drinking like this, about 100 grams of alcohol a day, is highly likely to be associated with liver cirrhosis and also cognitive deficits." It would also be likely to increase risks for depression and sexual dysfunction, conditions that would not be very Bondian.
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