Jodie Sweetin learned “humility” when all her money was “disappeared” amid her years of battling addiction.
The actress opened up about the financial toll of her addiction during a Nov. 4 appearance on actress Natanya Ross’s “We’re Still Here, Babe” podcast.
Sweetin, 44, revealed that the money she earned playing Stephanie Tanner on “Full House” ultimately went toward treatment before getting sober in 2011.
“(It’s) not like I’ve always been a materialistic person, but you learn humility when you’re at Target and you have to turn around and put shit back because you don’t have money on your debit card,” she said.
The Hallmark Channel actress went on to explain that she began working as an operations manager while undergoing treatment, in an effort to earn extra income.
“I was happy,” she added. “And I think part of the reason I was able to come back into the business and really enjoy it is because I had gone completely in the other direction. I just had a normal job.”
At the time, Sweetin was also already a mother to two daughters, Zoie, now 18, and Beatrix, now 16, whom she shares with her ex-husbands, Cody Herpin and Morty Coyle, respectively.
She remembers having “no money” and raising her children in a one-and-a-half bedroom apartment while earning just $2,200 a month, with her parents helping to cover half her rent.
“I was just trying to get by. (I) was driving an old, used car,” she added. “I had no 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 pay my bills. … The kids don’t pay for themselves.’
The “Dancing With the Stars” alum also explained that she “learned to be really happy” with her situation.
“I just threw myself into being present, as fully present as possible, and that old vibe, you know, ‘bloom where you’re planted,’” she recalls.
Things finally started to improve 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 got my first paycheck with like $190 in my bank account. And no one I worked with knew about it. Even though I cared,” she explained.
Reflecting on those difficult times, Sweetin said, “I was lucky enough to know a lot of really wonderful things, but I had experiences where there was no money. And your ego couldn’t be involved.”
Sweetin previously revealed that her drinking problems began when she was just 14, after drinking at her “Full House” co-star Candace Cameron Bure’s wedding in 1996.
“It was horrible, it was ugly, 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 damn about anything.’ You just don’t remember it,” she recalls.
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