Jodie Sweetin learned “humility” when all of her money was “gone” amid her years-long struggle with addiction.
The actress opened up about the financial toll of her addiction during a November 4 appearance on actress Natanya Ross’ We’re Still Here, Babe podcast.
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Sweetin, 44, revealed that the money she earned playing Stephanie Tanner on Full House ultimately went toward treatment before she got sober in 2011.
“[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 sh*t back ’cause you don’t have the money on your debit card,” she said.
The Hallmark Channel actress went on to explain she began working as a director of operations while in treatment in an effort to bring in some extra income.
“I was happy,” she added. “And 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. I was just working a normal job.”
At the time, Sweetin was also already a mother of two daughters, Zoie, now 18, and Beatrix, now 16, whom she shares with her ex-husbands, Cody Herpin and Morty Coyle, respectively.
She recalled having “no money” and raising her children in a one-and-half-bedroom apartment while earning just $US2200 ($3200) a month, with her parents helping cover half of 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’.”
The former Dancing With the Stars star also explained that she “learned to be really happy” with her circumstances.
“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 eventually began looking up for Sweetin when Fuller House premiered on Netflix in 2016, but her financial struggles didn’t disappear overnight.
“I had to borrow money the first week I was working on Fuller House, and I skidded into my first paycheck with, like, $US190 ($270) in my bank account. And nobody that I worked with knew that. Not that I cared,” she explained.
Reflecting on those difficult times, Sweetin said, “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.”
Sweetin previously revealed that her struggles with alcohol began when she was just 14, after drinking at her Full House co-star Candace Cameron Bure’s wedding in 1996.
“It was awful, and it was ugly, and it was embarrassing, and my mother was horrified,” she said last year, while adding that something “clicked” for her at the time.
“I was like, ‘Ooooh, that was fun. You didn’t give a sh*t about anything.’ Like, you just, you don’t remember it,” she recalled.
This article originally appeared in Page Six and was reproduced with permission