Jodie Sweetin, the “Full House” alum, is recalling the moment her struggles with addiction first took hold—at just 14 years old.
According to Fox News, on a recent episode of The Skinny Confidential podcast, the 43-year-old actress recounted blacking out for the first time at co-star Candace Cameron Bure’s wedding in 1996.
“Well, the first time I ever drank, I was like 14, and it was at Candace’s wedding, and I was just a blackout drinker,” Sweetin said. “The last thing I remember doing is somewhere around the ‘M’ of the ‘YMCA’ and then I don’t remember anything from the rest of the night. It was awful, and it was ugly, and it was embarrassing. My mother was horrified.”
She described drinking across the room from her mom as the wine kept coming. “They would pour a glass of wine… and then they’d get around to pouring more, and I was like, ‘I’ll take a little more, please.’ It was a lot of red wine, and the bathroom was very white.”
Despite her embarrassment, Sweetin said the experience sparked a dangerous curiosity. “I was like, ‘Oh, that was fun.’ Around 15, 16, I knew that I drank and partied in a way that my friends did not,” she admitted. “I would be like, ‘OK, well, now I’ve got to go find somebody that I can do these drugs with.’”
After Full House wrapped, Sweetin went through an identity crisis that drove her deeper into stimulants.
“I was more sober than anyone else in the room. I was looking for a way to make my brain work better,” she said. She recognized early on the risks of her lifestyle: “I knew for a very long time that I was heading down a road where it was either going to be jail, institutions, or death.”
Her life shifted after getting married and discovering her first pregnancy. “Like party time is done,” she said. She achieved sobriety in 2008, ending 15 years of substance abuse.
Sweetin has since been vocal about mental health and addiction.
“Having that wiring in your brain, something switches on when you’re an alcoholic. It feels like there is never enough,” she explained. She stressed the ongoing work of recovery: “A lot of it is really looking at yourself… how do I interact with people better? How do I hold myself to a higher standard?”
For Sweetin, therapy and medication have been crucial.
“Otherwise, my struggle was so bad I wasn’t getting out of bed,” she said, noting the importance of advocating for her own mental health even into adulthood.
