The ‘Full House’ star said the whole experience “was awful and it was ugly and it was embarrassing” — but it also “clicked” something inside of her, setting up years of drinking and partying “in a way that my friends did not.”
Jodie Sweetin has been candid about her struggles with alcohol and addiction in the past, but the former Full House star revealed in a recent podcast appearance that it all started at her co-star Candace Cameron Bure’s wedding when she was just 14 years old.
Sweetin’s on-screen older sister married Valeri Bure in 1996.
Describing herself as a “blackout drinker,” Sweetin opened up about that fateful night on the latest episode of the Skinny Confidential podcast. Now 43, Sweetin called the experience “awful and it was ugly and it was embarrassing,” per Us Weekly, adding, “And my mother was horrified.”
The former child star then opened up about how it happened, explaining, “I was at the table, and I was drinking, and, you know, it was like I was across the room from my mom.” She said that none of the adults were clued in to the fact that she was actually drinking alcohol as she sat there.
“So they would pour a glass of wine,” she said, “and then they’d get around right then, they’d get around to pouring more, and I was like, ‘I’ll take a little more, please.'”
She said the last thing she remembers that night was dancing to “YMCA” at the reception. “t was a lot of red wine and the bathroom was very white. Not a good mix,” she joked, per Page Six, describing herself that evening as a 14-year-old “idiot.”
While she said she “felt awful” the next day, still something “clicked” inside of her. “Ooh, that was fun,” she said that part of her was saying, “You didn’t give a s–t about anything. Like, you just don’t remember it.” She said that this response triggered a few years of extremely hard partying at a very young age.
Jodie Sweetin Talks Past Drug Addiction: “My Life Is A Lesson to Never Give Up”
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“I’d say around 15, 16, I knew that I drank and partied in a way that my friends did not,” she said. In fact, she said that her friends were trying to pull her back a bit, urging her to “settle down.” Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect.
“I would be like, ‘Okay, well, now I’ve got to go find somebody that I can do these drugs with,'” Sweetin said she resolved. “Or, you know, it was like finding different people that didn’t make you feel so bad about what you were doing.”
The actress said that she thinks she was susceptible for addiction because of her struggles with ADHD at the time, perhaps thinking that drugs and alcohol would help make her “brain work better.” Her struggles included alcohol, cocaine, ecstasy, and crystal meth.
Jodie Sweetin Gets Emotional During “DWTS,” Opens Up About Former Drug Addiction
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She also admitted during her stint on Dancing with the Stars in 2016 that she used addition in part to help her deal with the end of Full House in 1995. “At such a young age it really was a huge loss for me, I didn’t know how to grieve,” she told partner Keo Motsepe, per Radar Online. “Drugs and alcohol just sort of numbed everything.”
But she doesn’t blame child stardom, denying the trope of child actors falling into trouble as they transition into adulthood. “I always say, I would have struggled with addiction issues regardless of being on TV or not,” she insisted earlier this year on the Barely Famous Podcast with Kail Lowry.
Ultimately, Sweetin would enter rehab in her 20s, suffer a few relapses on the way, and finally find lasting sobriety in late 2008, per Fox News. “It’s been up and down, but it’s been 16 years since I’ve drank alcohol and 13 years since I relapsed on meds with a car accident that I was in,” she told Lowry in July.
You can check out her full appearance on The Skinny Confidential below:
