“I don’t want to be doing what I’ve been doing the last 64 years. I want a better, cleaner, cooler, more exciting way to knock out the last 20,” Bertinelli tells PEOPLE.
Valerie Bertinelli is over six months alcohol-free — and feeling better than ever.
On July 1, the Indulge author, 64, shared the big milestone on her Instagram. Now, she’s sharing her most noticeable change since cutting out the substance.
“Even with life struggles and how life can be challenging, I find that it is easier to get myself clearer faster, about what I need to do and taking care of my life,” she tells PEOPLE. “I feel good when I wake up in the morning. I’m not groggy. I’m not tired. I’m not: ‘What did I do last night?’”
The Hot in Cleveland actress considers herself “one of the lucky ones.”
“I don’t think I ever really had a problem [with alcohol] and that’s why it was a bit, I don’t want to say easy, but it was an easier path for me to start with dry January,” she says, adding. “And then go, ‘Well, I’m halfway through February, now I might as well just keep going.’ And now for me, I kind of make a game of it.”
In her April PEOPLE cover story, Bertinelli said that food and alcohol were in her “toolkit for soothing and ignoring s— that I shouldn’t be soothing and ignoring.” Over the last six months, she’s proved that’s not the case anymore.
“[It’s] keeping me honest about my emotions and honest about my mental health journey, and my work that I want to do there,” she says.
While the biggest changes in her life have already yielded some positive, short-term results, Bertinelli ultimately made this conscious decision to stop drinking for her long-term future.
“I say all the time, ‘If I’m lucky, I have 20 more years left,’ and I want them to be the best years of my life. And I don’t want to be doing what I’ve been doing the last 64 years,” she says. “I want a better, cleaner, cooler, more exciting way to knock out the last 20.”
Bertinelli, who was promoting her adorably-designed spatula for Williams Sonoma’s collaboration with No Kid Hungry, also spoke about the candid way she opens up to her fans on social media.
“I think I’ve always been a verbal vomiter,” she quips. “But I think the last, I want to say five, six years have probably made me be a little bit more honest. Once I started getting really honest with myself and decided that I wasn’t going to necessarily fake it ‘till I make it and pretend to be happy when I’m not, and just be as authentic as I possibly can.”
As she increasingly shared more gems of wisdom — including everything from healing after toxic relationships to working on her mental health — Bertinelli says it began to “touch a nerve with people.”
“I think sometimes we can be a hand out to say, ‘Hey, I’m trying to do this and if you need some help, I can be here too,’” she says. “And that I have a platform that I can put my hand out and say, ‘Come along with me.’ That’s fulfilling in itself. By me just being able to verbal-vomit my feelings and that helps somebody else. Why wouldn’t I?”
