Valerie Bertinelli is forever America’s sweetheart, but even she had her moments of partying like a rock star — the actress was married to Eddie Van Halen, after all.
Bertinelli appeared on Thursday’s Literally! With Rob Lowe podcast where she talked about keeping up with her husband and his band 40 years ago. “I am a prude now but I [partook] as well for a few years there until I just couldn’t take it anymore,” she revealed.
“We all did in the ’80s,” Lowe replied.
“Cocaine was everywhere and easy to get,” Bertinelli said.
Lowe, who got sober in 1990, reflected on how it was a different time back then.
“It was before the bill had become due and we just didn’t know. Not only that … people were saying it was good for you. It helped you think, it was what ‘successful’ people did in our industry. All the people you admired did it,” Lowe explained.
“I got tired after a while of hating the birds chirping. When I would hear birds chirping, I would just get so tense. It took me years before I enjoyed a sunrise and enjoyed the birds chirping,” Bertinelli said. “It’s like, ‘I was going to stop three bumps ago and I didn’t and here I am and the birds are chirping, Goddammit! Why did I do this!'”
Lowe said they are “lucky that we got off the ride.”
“Because a lot of people follow it all the way down,” he said. “I think it’s better to crash and burn than to be incrementally boiled alive by it … I think that’s what happens to a lot of people who can ‘recreationally dabble.'”
Eddie Van Halen was not someone who could recreationally dabble. He and Bertinelli separated in 2001 and divorced in 2007 because of his drug addiction.
“We all have a toolbox that we go to when we need to suppress any kind of emotion that we don’t want to feel, any kind of pain that we don’t want to feel. I know that Ed’s toolbox was full of drugs and alcohol,” Bertinelli reflected to Lowe.
“It took a very, very long time for him to just not use it to deal with his pain. Near the end of his life, his pain was incredibly raw and he was very vulnerable about it. I’m grateful that he was able to make amends with so many people that he loved and knew that he didn’t treat as well as he would have liked to because his heart … was just so kind and so sweet,” she said. “I was too immature and I was too into my own world to know how to help. I was a kid. We were 20 when I got married, that’s insane.”
Eddie passed away in Oct. 2020 from cancer. He and Bertinelli, who share 30-year-old son Wolfie, had a sweet relationship before his death.
