Jimmy Fallon was in a great mood. Dressed down in jeans and a striped sweater, the late-night TV host appeared to be letting loose as he watched the New York Yankees take on the Miami Marlins in NYC on April 16. A witness who saw him in the stands tells In Touch that during the game, Jimmy downed two large beers, “one right after the other.”

Though a lot of people like to unwind at the ballpark, friends of the comedy star, 43, believe he should have skipped the booze entirely. “It’s no secret that Jimmy likes to get a good buzz on. But Jimmy drinks a lot. And quickly,” an insider tells In Touch. With several troubling, headline-making incidents involving alcohol in recent years and, says the insider, tension building at home related to his alcohol consumption, loved ones fear Jimmy’s drinking is getting out of control. “It’s a constant worry for all of them. He’s a gentle, sweet guy, and they just want him to stop.”

Jimmy had cleaned up his act for a while, says the insider, but the last six months have been tough. His beloved mother, Gloria, died in November. And in early 2018, CBS rival Late Show With Stephen Colbert was regularly beating The Tonight Show by more than a million viewers an episode. “He started drinking again,” the insider says. “Jimmy definitely knows better, but when he drinks too much he loses it, and that usually means he does really stupid things.”

jimmy fallon drinking

Jimmy raised eyebrows in 2015 after suffering two unusual — and serious — injuries to his hands in separate accidents. That June, he spent 10 days in the ICU after taking a tumble and nearly ripping off his finger. A source later claimed to In Touch that it happened “not because he was clumsy but because he fell after partying all night.” Four months later, Jimmy sported bandages after falling onto a broken Jägermeister bottle while accepting an award at Harvard University. Stories about him drinking to excess and then singing, buying shots for fellow patrons or escaping bar brawls at watering holes around NYC have made headlines since 2014.

Friends worry all the drama will take a toll on Jimmy’s marriage. His wife of a decade, producer Nancy Juvonen, 50, “has given him the benefit of the doubt many times,” explains the insider, “but she has their two young girls [Winnie, 4, and Frances, 3] to take care of and she doesn’t have the energy to deal with it.”

Jimmy, Nancy, and their daughters split their time between the family’s apartment in NYC and a weekend home in the Hamptons. And while both Nancy and Jimmy are hands-on parents, his love of a good time is no secret. “Jimmy’s not the young, single guy from Saturday Night Live anymore who can go on the town every night partying with friends,” says the insider. “He’s a husband and a father with a lot riding on his shoulders.”

Both Jimmy and NBC have strongly denied there’s a problem. “I could never do a day-to-day job if I was drinking every night,” Jimmy told The New York Times in 2017. A year earlier, an NBC exec insisted Jimmy “doesn’t have a drinking problem that any of us know about.” But while Jimmy used to make silly quips to pals about boozing, “like how he needs to stop drinking,” says the insider, “he doesn’t say much about it at all anymore. Jimmy is a smart guy. Time is running out. He needs to stop drinking.”

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