Nick Swardson’s Fans Accuse Him of Being Belligerently Drunk During Disastrous Canceled Stand-Up Set

To our knowledge, no one in Beaver Creek, Colorado tested Nick Swardson’s blood alcohol content after Vilar Performing Arts Center escorted him offstage in the middle of his set. However, I’ve never known any sober stand-up to yell into a microphone mid-86, “What the fuck? Let’s go! Who here knows who Norm Macdonald is?”

Last night, the Reno 911! star and perennial Adam Sandler collaborator attempted to perform a set in the Colorado ski town that slid off trail pretty much immediately. While the exact start of the breakdown is murky, accounts from the night claim that Swardson was ranting incoherently into the microphone for a number of minutes before organizers cut the lights on his set and later asked him to leave the stage. Many fan-recorded videos show an unruly, unbalanced Swardson yelling at the event’s coordinators while the crowd’s confusion and outrage boiled over. 

In the past, Swardson has worn his partying habits proudly on his sleeve, so it’s unsurprising that the general reaction from his fanbase following last night’s embarrassing display has basically been along the lines of, “So how bad’s the hangover?”

Back in September, 2022, Swardson told a story on Theo Von's podcast This Past Weekend about a different Rocky Mountain bender that landed him in the hospital for almost a full month and even threatened his life. According to Swardson, he had to be taken from Denver International Airport to the emergency room after he'd spent the day drinking heavily, eating nothing and throwing up constantly, and, once he was admitted to the hospital, doctors told him he had a 10 percent chance of surviving the ordeal. Swardson spent “three and a half weeks” in the hospital, during which time “my family flew in to say goodbye to me.”

Though Swardson has since claimed that he has quit drinking, the pinned post on his Twitter page only continues to fuel fan speculation about the comic's possible alcohol problems – the tweet reads, "Saw someone with ‘my warm up is your work out’ shirt. Well, my casual drinking is your alcohol poisoning so fuck you." 

Under Swardson's most recent Instagram post promoting the disastrous Beaver Creek set, Colorado fans unloaded on the comic for seemingly getting too loaded to get laughs. “You owe us babysitting money! And you owe whoever was babysitting you. Actually you don’t owe them because they let you get blacked out before the show,” one angry show-goer wrote. Another added, “Your jokes were on a liquid diet and it might be time for some dry humor.”

Some fans were more concerned than outraged over the incident, however – one of the show's attendees commented, “Just went to his show tonight and he was too drunk to perform. Not ok. Get help bro.” Another pleaded with the comic, “Nick - don’t ruin your career for a few beers. You are talented and have the opportunity not many get.”

Twitter, however, was less forgiving about the ugly scene. One ruthless poster wrote under one of the many videos of the cut-short show, “Who’s really at rock bottom? Nick Swardson or the people paying to see Nick Swardson?”