Valerie Bertinelli Celebrates 'Six Months No Alcohol' — and Her Boyfriend Reveals He Stopped Drinking Too
The cookbook author told PEOPLE in April about her decision not to drink
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Valerie BertinelliValerie Bertinelli is six months sober.
On July 1, the former Food Network star shared a sunny selfie on Instagram celebrating the milestone.
“Six months. No alcohol,” she captioned the post. Bertinelli also tagged the Reframe app, which is an “alcohol reduction and quitting app" that she used for guidance along the way.
Her boyfriend, Mike Goodnough, shared that the pair just so happened to embark on this journey together. "Funny how we both just randomly decided to stop drinking only weeks before we met each other," he commented on her post.
The Indulge cookbook author has been open about her alcohol-free decision over the past several months. In her April cover story with PEOPLE, she shared that part of the reason was because she didn't "need anything to amplify my happiness right now."
"I feel high just on life," she said at the time. "I recently went out to dinner with a friend, and I had ginger ale in a wine glass. And it felt like I was celebrating.”
Bertinelli told PEOPLE she began thinking about "taking alcohol out of my life" when writing her 2022 memoir, Enough Already.
“I was still going through a lot of crap, and I knew that I wanted to be on the road of intentionally finding my core happiness," she said.
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Valerie Bertinelli and boyfriend Mike GoodnoughThose years were challenging for the actress, starting with the death of her first husband, rocker Eddie Van Halen in 2020, followed by her split from her second husband, Tom Vitale, in 2022.
She said food and alcohol were in her “toolkit for soothing and ignoring s--- that I shouldn't be soothing and ignoring.”
"I would go out and have a fun time, drink, and the next day, I'd be so sad," she added. "Because there was so much sadness in my life, and alcohol amplified it."
“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."
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