Is a sobriety memoir still honest if the author was relapsing while she wrote it?
That's the question Suz and I couldn't shake after reading and listening to Jodi Sweetin's \"UnSweetined\", and it's why we brought this one back as a bonus episode.
We dug into Jodie's story from Full House's beloved Stephanie Tanner to the meth addiction she hid for years, and we couldn't agree on much except this: the book is fascinating, fast paced, and also strangely hard to trust. Jodie wrote most of \"UnSweetined\" while she was actively using, only getting sober once she became a mother, and we talked about what that means for a memoir that's marketed as a redemption story. We got into the newer audiobook forward Jodie recorded sixteen years after the book's original release, where she updates listeners on two more marriages, another child, and a version of sobriety she never quite defines for us.
We also spent time in the good stuff, the Full House trivia we didn't know and the way the cast really did seem to love each other. But we kept circling back to the same tension. Jodie is disarmingly honest about her own manipulation and dishonesty, and yet there's a lack of accountability running underneath all of it, a scapegoating that never quite resolves. We talked about what we expect from addiction memoirs, whether humor can be armor, and whether a book like this would exist at all if she weren't famous.
Share this conversation with someone who grew up watching Full House, or with anyone who's ever wondered what a redemption arc actually requires.
\"I still don't know what it was that I was so unhappy about. To some people it probably looked like I had it all. If I had to sit and list what was bothering me at the time, I don't think I could have done it. All I knew was that I didn't want to be me.\" - Jodie Sweetin
Thank you for supporting the show!
xx, Alex
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