Jodie Sweetin, the 44-year-old actress who played Stephanie Tanner on Full House until its conclusion in 1995, once admitted to using drugs during her teenage years. This was primarily due to her fear that her peers would view her as “stuck up” after she became a TV star.
In an interview with Michael Rosenbaum for his Inside of You podcast, Sweetin revealed the internal struggle she faced post-show. She explained, “After the show ended, particularly in high school, there was this strange feeling that everyone assumed I was quote unquote a TV star… The rumor before you would even start at a school was like, ‘Oh, she’s a stuck-up b***h.'”
To combat these perceptions and prove her detractors wrong, Sweetin decided to act worse than her peers. She stated, “I wanted to prove them wrong. So, in order to make myself palatable and make other people feel like I wasn’t better than them, I would try to be worse than them… ‘I don’t think I’m better than you. I’ll get more f**ked up. I’ll do more drugs.'”
Sweetin’s struggle with her identity was profound, as she often questioned whether her fame was the sole reason for people’s affection towards her. She confessed, “You keep going, and then that becomes who you are… You had to make a mess of relationships, cheat, lie, get involved with really severely toxic, scary people.”
After hitting rock bottom, Sweetin got sober and entered therapy. This process helped her realize she had often let others dictate her choices rather than making decisions herself. She said, “I realized I just, sort of, let everyone else make choices for me… I never really even asked myself, ‘What do you want?'”
Through this journey, Sweetin found a sense of peace and self-acceptance. She expressed gratitude for the therapy sessions that allowed her to reflect on her past decisions and understand herself better.