Jodie Sweetin visits campus

The audience cheered as the former Full House actress, Jodie Sweetin, said her catchphrase, "How rude!" to students in the Student Center Ballroom this past Monday.

Unfortunately, the brevity of the saying was indicative of the substance of Sweetin's speech.

Sweetin, after backing out of an earlier scheduled speech, showed up to Tech with a cold-ridden voice to talk about her experience as a child star and later drug addict.

After the sitcom hit Full House was canceled, then 13-year-old Sweetin was just entering high school. She found it hard to adjust to a normalcy beyond the scope of a television set, but she soon found a remedy that, for Sweetin, was a slippery slope of alcohol, an addiction to methamphetamines and deceit.

As her habits worsened and her experimentation grew, Sweetin resisted counseling before eventually attending Chapman University in Orange County, California. There, she was able to amass a grade point average of 0.9 in her first semester.

Sweetin, in an attempt to relate with students, spoke of her fear of experiencing highs and lows and her consequent drug use.

"Without that fix, life was absolutely terrifying." Sweetin further remarked that she didn't know how to control life.

Sweetin transitioned her story into explaining her recovery that led her to become sober at the end of her first year in college. She found herself on the Dean's List with a new house and an engagement ring by the end of her third year.

Attributing to the rehabilitation was support from her family and a particular theology class she took which dealt with the spiritual aspects of 12-step programs. Graduating with a degree in elementary education, Sweetin's battle with addiction ultimately gave her the lifestyle she had always dreamed of.

Within one month of falling back into the drug scene, Sweetin was taking speed, coke, and meth, everyday. This created the tendency of experiencing huge crashes that would only result in a stronger addiction to the drugs. The downward trend gave her greater feelings of unhappiness and emptiness and with it followed an inevitable divorce.

The negative effects were not merely social, but in fact there came a point where Sweetin was under a hundred pounds, had frequent heart arrhythmias brought on by the methamphetamines, and suffered many alcohol-related complications. In March 2005, she checked herself into a rehab facility where she almost died.

According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, in 2005 the percentage of the college student population that took methamphetamines in the past year is 1.7 percent. Sweetin's speech highlighted the dangers of this drug.