Jodie Sweetin has opened up about the financial ruin that followed her years-long drug addiction.
The “Full House” alum, 44, told actress Natanya Ross on the Nov. 4 episode of the “We’re Still Here, Babe” podcast that the money she earned playing Stephanie Tanner on the hit sitcom ultimately went toward treatment before she got sober in 2011. Sweetin said she learned humility when she found herself at Target unable to pay for her purchases.
“[It’s] not like I was ever a materialistic person, but you learn humility when you are at Target and you got to turn around and go put some s–t back ’cause you don’t have the money on your debit card,” she said on the podcast.
At the time, Sweetin was raising two daughters, Zoie, now 18, and Beatrix, now 16, whom she shares with ex-husbands Cody Herpin and Morty Coyle, respectively. She recalled living in a one-and-a-half-bedroom apartment and earning just $2,200 a month, with her parents covering half her rent.
“I was just trying to get by. [I] drove an old used car,” she added. “I didn’t have [an] ego about it. I didn’t care that I was ‘working a normal job.’ I think other people, again, were like, ‘What are you doing here?’ And I was like, ‘I’m paying my bills. … Kids don’t pay for themselves.'”
To bring in extra income while in treatment, Sweetin began working as a director of operations. She said she was happy in that role, and that the experience helped her return to entertainment with genuine appreciation.
“I think part of the reason that I was able to come back into the business and enjoy it truly is that I had gone completely in the other direction,” she explained. “I was just working a normal job.”
Sweetin also said she “learned to be really happy” with her scaled-back circumstances, throwing herself into being present with her children.
“I just threw myself into being present, as fully present as I could be, and that old, you know, ‘bloom where you’re planted’ kind of vibe,” she recalled.
Things shifted when “Fuller House” premiered on Netflix in 2016, but the financial relief was not immediate. Sweetin revealed she had to borrow money her first week on the revival and nearly hit bottom before collecting her first paycheck.
“I had to borrow money the first week I was working on ‘Fuller House,’ and I skidded into my first paycheck with, like, $190 in my bank account. And nobody that I worked with knew that. Not that I cared,” she said.
Reflecting on those difficulties, Sweetin emphasized that ego had no place in her survival strategy.
“I’ve been very fortunate to know a lot of really wonderful things, but I have had those experiences where there’s no money. And your ego can’t be involved,” she said.
Sweetin had previously shared that her struggles with alcohol began at age 14, when she drank at her “Full House” co-star Candace Cameron Bure’s wedding in 1996. Speaking about that experience last year, she recalled her mother’s horror and her own dangerous attraction to the feeling.
“It was awful, and it was ugly, and it was embarrassing, and my mother was horrified,” she said, adding that something “clicked” for her at the time. “I was like, ‘Ooooh, that was fun. You didn’t give a s–t about anything.’ Like, you just, you don’t remember it.”
The “Dancing With the Stars” alum has since built a career that includes Hallmark Channel roles and continued advocacy around addiction recovery.
Sweetin is set to appear next at a recovery awareness event in Los Angeles.