'Fuller House' Actress Jodie Sweetin Reflects on Five Years of Sobriety

Sweetin credits her fiancé, who is also in recovery, and her children with helping her on the road to recovery.

Jodie Sweetin’s life is proof that a lot can change when you put down alcohol and drugs. Not only is the former Full House star experiencing a career resurgence with the Fuller House reboot on Netflix, but more importantly, she celebrated five years sober in March.

"I look back at things that have happened in the past, and I look at where I'm now, and it's crazy," the 34-year-old recently told Us Weekly. "If anything, my life is a lesson to never give up."

The actress, who documented her battle with booze and drugs in her 2010 memoir unSweetined, says her fiancé Justin Hodak—who is 11 years sober—has helped her stay on track. "We turn to each other for support," she said. "We both have our own lives and things we're excited about, but we combine that, where we have this great relationship."

In unSweetined, the actress describes how getting drunk for the first time later devolved into dangerous cycle. "I probably had two bottles of wine, and I was only 14," she wrote. "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." Her substance use would later include drugs like angel dust and crystal meth, which she recalled snorting in the bathroom at the premiere of a Mary-Kate & Ashley movie.

She also talks about being a new mother while struggling with addiction, which included once driving drunk with her baby in the car. The child star began to understand the behavior of her own mother, an addict who put her up for adoption when she was a baby. "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?'" she wrote. "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."

Her two daughters motivate her to stay sober, says Sweetin. She is now gearing up for a second season of Fuller House and is a frontrunner on this season’s Dancing With the Stars. Life is good for the actress. "I've got everything I could want," she told Us Weekly.