Source: Entertainment Weekly

Jodie Sweetin is speaking candidly about her first experience with alcohol, which came years before she was of legal age.

The actress, 43, explained that she got “blackout” drunk at her Full House costar Candace Cameron Bure’s wedding to hockey player Valeri Bure in 1996.

“The first time I ever drank, I was like, 14, 13? And it was at Candace’s wedding and I was just a blackout drinker,” Sweetin said on a recent episode of the Skinny Confidential Him & Her podcast. “The last thing I remember doing, I think, is somewhere around the M of a ‘YMCA,’ and I don’t remember anything from the rest of the night.”

She noted that the entire experience was “awful and it was ugly and it was embarrassing,” adding, “My mother was horrified.”

The former child star shared that her mom was seated across the room at the event, which allowed Sweetin to get drinks from other adults nearby. “They would pour a glass of wine,” she said, “and then they’d get around to pouring more, and I was like, ‘I’ll take a little more, please.’ Like an idiot 13, 14-year-old.”

While she was “horrified the next day,” Sweetin said that something “clicked” into place for her after the experience. “I was like, ‘Oh, that was fun. You didn’t give a s‑‑‑ about anything. You just don’t remember it,'” she said.

By the time she turned 15, Sweetin was well aware that she “drank and partied in a way that my friends did not.”

She continued, “They were like, ‘What? Bro, settle down.’ I would be like, ‘Okay, well, now I’ve got to go find somebody that I can do these drugs with.’ Or, you know, it was like finding different people that didn’t make you feel so bad about what you were doing.”

Sweetin added that it was her goal to get “as wasted as possible” whenever she drank. “I think I knew for a very long time that I was heading down a road that it was going to be jail, institutions, or death, like they talk about in 12-step programs,” she said. “Those become your three options.”

It wasn’t until she married her second husband, Cody Herpin, and became pregnant with their first child, Zoie, that Sweetin committed to getting sober.

“It was up and down, it wasn’t perfect. I haven’t had a perfect journey,” she admitted, “but that really was the thing that changed everything that was like, ‘Oh, okay. Party time’s done. I gotta take care of somebody else.'”

Over the years Sweetin has been open about her battles with drug and alcohol addiction, which began after Full House ended in 1995. She got sober in 2008, and previously discussed her first time drinking at Bure’s wedding in her 2009 memoir, UnSweetined.

Sweetin and Bure starred as siblings Stephanie and D.J. Tanner on all eight season of Full House. They reprised their roles as adults on Netflix’s Fuller House, which ran for five seasons, from 2016 to 2020.

Sweetin is also a cohost of the Full House rewatch podcast How Rude, Tanneritos, alongside castmate Andrea Barber. Watch Sweetin’s full interview with The Skinny Confidential above.

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.

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