Getting Sober Helped Me Grieve Late Bob Saget

A personal journey. Dave Coulier opened up about how his sobriety became a useful tool while grieving a number of losses, including the death of his friend Bob Saget.

“I definitely went through the sorrow hat trick, so to speak,” the actor, 62, said during the Monday, May 2, episode of The Tamron Hall Show. “My brother took his own life and he was actually the funniest person I’ve ever known. My brother, Dan. I was the one who found him at my dad’s house down in the basement. A part of me died that day, as well, because I really loved my brother.”

Coulier continued, “I made jokes to my friends and family and the line was, ‘Boy, I sure picked the wrong time in my life to stop drinking.’ And people would laugh at that knowing I was sober. And then my father passed away a couple of months ago and I got to say all the of the things that a son could say to his father about how proud I was.”

The Full House alum went on to describe his final conversation with his late costar, who died in January at the age of 65. “He was texting me and making me laugh and we were texting back and forth and making each other laugh very hard,” Coulier said of Saget. “The last thing I said to him was, ‘Have a great show tonight.’ That was my last real connection with Bob.”

Saget performed a stand-up comedy set in Florida hours before he was found dead in his hotel room. The How I Met Your Mother alum was laid to rest that month with several former Full House stars in attendance, including John Stamos and Candace Cameron Bure. A medical examiner later determined Saget’s death was accidental as the result of “blunt head trauma.”

The Michigan native, for his part, revealed in March that he is two years sober. Coulier credited his lifestyle change with helping him cope, noting on Monday, “I thought to myself after those three lives were gone, I would’ve never been able to feel all of that if I was drinking and it was really important to me to just feel that sorrow. There was nothing masking that, there were no layers that were covering that up. I thought to myself, ‘This is what I should be doing. I should be feeling this pain. I should be feeling this incredible love for these people.’”

He continued, “With alcohol, I was covering all that up. It was a real stark reminder to me that alcohol had been stealing all of those moments in my life for a long, long time.”

After sharing his story earlier this year, Coulier told Good Morning America that it was “hard” to admit to himself that he was an alcoholic — but he didn’t regret turning his life around. “I’m having the best time of my life,” he said in March. “I feel healthier than I ever have. You have to feel like you want to change and improve your life and let it come from the inside outward.”

If you or anyone you know is facing substance abuse issues, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-4357 for free and confidential information 24/7.

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