Between Britney Spears and whatever Jada Pinkett Smith’s got going on, it’s been a big week for celebrity tell-all memoirs. Now, John Stamos is adding himself to that conversation with his own book, titled If You Would Have Told Me. While Stamos’ memoir isn’tFull HouseFuller House)some preview content to People today.
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In the heaviest reveal so far, Stamos opens up about how “it took... writing a book” to realize he was a survivor of sexual abuse, allegedly perpetrated by a former babysitter. “I mean, I knew, it was always in the back, and I do so much advocacy for the [survivors],” he said. “I felt like, I remembered it slightly. It has always been there, but I packed it away as people do, right?”
Stamos went on to explain that he first started to reflect on the experience while writing an acceptance speech for an award for his advocacy work, but didn’t mention it at the time because “I didn’t want the headlines to be that, and I didn’t want the book to be over that.” In the book, he says, “it was a page or something, but I felt I had to talk about it. It was weird. It was something that, I think, I was probably like 10 or 11 [when it happened]. I shouldn’t have had to deal with those feelings.”
“But I’ll tell you, if I found out someone was doing that to my son... that’s a totally different story,” he continued. Stamos shares one son—Billy, age 5—with wife Caitlin McHugh Stamos. He was previously married to actor Rebecca Rommijn, a relationship that ended in a bitter divorce. “My first marriage was shattering to me. I was shattered for way too long, too,” he said, specifying that it was “really difficult” to revisit those feelings while writing the book. “In my mind back then, she was the Devil, and I just hated her... it ruined my life.”
“That’s when I really started to kind of drink a lot,” he continued, specifying that Alcoholics Anonymous helped him realize that he had “some part” in the breakdown of his relationship. “You start thinking, it’s like, ‘Oh, she wasn’t the Devil. Maybe I was as much to blame as her.’”
Stamos first realized he had to change when he was arrested for impaired driving in 2015. “I had that DUI and I was like, ‘I can’t do this. I’ve got to straighten up,’” he said. “That’s when I was confusing the universe because I’m not a bad person, but I was doing crappy things.”
He also explained that he felt lucky upon leaving rehab because “I had a lot waiting for me...[but] a lot of people don’t, because they burned their lives down.” “I had my sisters, but I also had Fuller House. I got home and I think like a week later, we started Fuller House,” he said.
Now, Stamos finds it easy to maintain his sobriety “because it’s still so fresh in my mind that all I have to do is look at that picture of me in handcuffs on that street... Never again.” Plus, the actor says, the healing process over his divorce and alcoholism is what eventually led him to his family. “Without that, I never would’ve known what a real love is, and I would’ve never straightened up to get someone like Caitlin in my life,” he wrote.