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Jodie Sweetin, one of the stars of the iconic late ’80s/mid-’90s family sitcom “Full House,” recently recounted the first time she drank alcohol and the impact it had on her life during a podcast interview earlier this month.
Sweetin, who played Stephanie Tanner on the show, has been open about her struggles with drug and alcohol addiction in the past. The former child actor was a guest on the Nov. 20 episode of The Skinny Confidential’s “Him & Her” podcast, hosted by Lauryn Evarts Bosstick and Michael Bossick.
Sweetin revealed that the first time she drank alcohol was at the wedding of Candace Cameron Bure, who played DJ Tanner on the series, to hockey player Valeri Bure. The wedding took place about a year after the end of “Tres por tres,” which aired from 1987 to 1995.
“Well, the first time I drank I was 14, 13… and it was at Candace’s wedding and I was a blackout drinker,” Sweetin said. “I think the last thing I remember doing was somewhere around the M for a ‘YMCA,’ and then I don’t remember anything about the rest of the night.
“It was horrible, ugly and embarrassing,” he added. “My mother was horrified.”
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Sweetin was then asked if her parents knew she was participating in the adult festivities.
“I was at the table and I was drinking… and I was on the other side of my mom’s room,” Sweetin said. “They poured a glass of wine and then they poured more, and I said, ‘I’ll have a little more, please.’ Like a 13, 14-year-old idiot. There was a lot of red wine and the bathroom was very white, it wasn’t a good mix.”
Sweetin was “horrified the next day” and recalled feeling “horrible” about her behavior, but said something in her “clicked” and her sense of shame transformed into elation.
“I thought, ‘Oh, that was funny. You didn’t give a shit about anything. You just don’t remember,'” he said.
But Sweetin also said he realized his antics weren’t the norm among his peers.
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“I definitely knew at a young age, I would say around 15 or 16, I knew that I drank and partied in a way that my friends didn’t,” he recalled. “And they said, ‘What, brother? Calm down.'”
She continued to look for people who wouldn’t judge her, “finding different people who wouldn’t make you feel so bad about what you were doing.”
Later in the interview, he talked about his past addiction, his goals during that time, and why he always went “too far.”
“I wasn’t a person who said, ‘Oh, let’s have a sip of wine at dinner,’” he said. “I was like, ‘If we’re not going to have a bottle, what’s the point?’ “I always knew my goal was to drink until I passed out or just get as drunk as possible.”
When she was 20 years old, the actress noticed how she was going down a scary path.
“I didn’t think I’d probably make it to my 30s, like I was when I was in my twenties, like 24, 25,” Sweetin recalled. “And then life changed. I got married again and quickly found out I was pregnant, and then I thought, ‘Okay. This is what we’re doing now.'”
“Everything changed. There were ups and downs, it wasn’t perfect,” he added. “I haven’t had a perfect trip, but that’s really what changed everything, like, ‘Oh, okay. The party’s over. I have to take care of someone else.'”