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Jodie Sweetin Discusses Meth Addiction As Netflix Teases ‘Fuller House’ With Set Photos

By Shelley Hazen
Published on: 02:36 PST, Jan 8, 2016

A decade after Full House went off the air, Jodie Sweetin is back where she belongs: in the role of Stephanie Tanner.

The much-hyped Netflix reboot of the beloved family series, Fuller House, is scheduled for release on Feb. 26. O/*-n Thursday, new photos of the series were released to eager fans.

Ahead of that premiere, Sweetin, 32, is talking once again about the decade of addiction she suffered between the original show and the reboot. Five years sober now, Jodie said “my life is amazing,” Today reported.

Sweetin‘s story is People‘s cover story this week.

“I will have five years [of sobriety] in March. It’s given me a lot of gratitude.”

Sweetin struggled with a crystal meth addiction after her Full House years. She joined the show at five years old and by 14, she drank two bottles of wine at her co-star, Candace Cameron Bure’s, wedding. That was the beginning of Jodie’s addiction, Redbook Magazine recounted.

“That first drink gave me the self confidence I had been searching for my whole life. But that set the pattern of the kind of drinking that I would do,” she wrote in her 2010 memoir, Unsweetined.

Sweetin began using cocaine in high school, and then moved on to crystal meth. By 2004, her addiction became so uncontrollable that she found herself snorting meth in the bathroom stall at Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s movie premier.

“I was pulling off the deceit. It was hard for people to believe I was doing that much drugs. I look at photos from that event, and I didn’t even look strung out!” she wrote.

Sweetin’s addiction also helped her to understand a painful chapter in her past: the decision by her mother, who also had trouble with addiction, to put her up for adoption when Jodie was a baby. A mom of two, Sweetin understood why her mother made that choice one frightening day when she drove drunk with her baby in the car.

“I would hear stories about my mom leaving me to go off and party. And for years I was like, ‘F–her. How could somebody do that to their kid?’ When I started seeing my own addiction getting in the way of being a mom, I finally understood: If you’re not in the right place to get sober, you’re not ready to be a mom,” she said.

The young actress ultimately got sober for her kids, and these days, Jodie talks about her addiction and recovery to college students.

“I speak about my experience growing up in the entertainment business, what my life was like after, some of the struggles and things I went through and where my life is today. It’s a story with a message of second chances and turning things around and being able to overcome some adversity.”

Reprising Stephanie Tanner on Fuller House is helping the troubled actress turn her life around, and keep it that way. The relationship Sweetin said she shares with her co-stars is a source of positivity and goes beyond the show’s set.

Jodie said the cast is together “all the time,” and both they and their families are “close.” Fellow cast member, John Stamos — who struggled with alcohol abuse — said much the same.

“You can’t cast chemistry, and we never stopped loving each other,” he said. “The magic you saw 25 years ago? It’s still there because it never stopped the day that we ended the show.”

That should make fans pretty excited for the 2016 reboot of the series to get started. As a teaser, Netflix released a series of photos from the show — with the cast all grown up and giving advice to their own kids — on Thursday, The Hollywood Reporter added.

The photos feature the Tanner daughters (and reboot stars) D.J. (Bure) and Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin), D.J. bestie Kimmy (Andrea Barber) alongside their own children. Returning favorites Uncle Jesse (Stamos), Joey (Dave Collier), Danny (Bob Saget) and Aunt Becky (Lori Loughlin) also feature.

All of the photos were snapped on the set, a loyal recreation of the original Tanner house in San Francisco.

[Photo By Jaguar PS/Shutterstock]

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