The cookbook author opened up about deciding not to drink back in April
Valerie Bertinelli is celebrating a big milestone – she is six months sober!
On July 1, the former Food Network star shared a cheerful selfie on Instagram to commemorate this achievement. She simply captioned her photo, “Six months. No alcohol,” and credited the Reframe app, a tool for reducing or quitting alcohol, for helping her along the way.
Interestingly, her boyfriend, Mike Goodnough, revealed they both started their sobriety journey around the same time, even before they met each other. “Funny how we both just randomly decided to stop drinking only weeks before we met each other,” he noted on her Instagram post.
Bertinelli has been candid about her alcohol-free lifestyle for several months. In her April interview, she mentioned feeling naturally happy and not needing anything to boost her joy. “I feel high just on life,” she remarked. She recounted a dinner with a friend where she celebrated with ginger ale in a wine glass, appreciating it as a joyous moment without alcohol.
Her decision to quit alcohol began germinating when she was writing her 2022 memoir, Enough Already. Reflecting on that time, she said, “I was still going through a lot of personal struggles, and I knew I wanted to be deliberate about finding true happiness.”
The past few years have been tough for the actress, starting with the death of her first husband, rocker Eddie Van Halen in 2020, and her divorce from her second husband, Tom Vitale, in 2022.
She admitted that food and alcohol had been her mechanisms for coping, but they only worsened her emotional state. “I would go out and have fun, drink, and the next day, I’d be extremely sad,” she explained.
“I think it’s important to really not numb emotional pain,” Bertinelli said. “Emotions are information. When I decided to really question why I was having a certain emotion, I was able to — most of the time — walk through it and get to the other side.”
Sobriety has been easier than she thought it would be. “I’m actually shocked at how hard it’s not,” she said. “Because for a long time, I leaned on it. Right now, I love how I feel more than how the alcohol makes me feel.”
