Valerie Bertinelli Gave Up Drinking After Using It to 'Numb Emotional Pain': 'I Feel Just High on Life' (Exclusive)

"I don't need anything to amplify my happiness right now," Valerie Bertinelli joyfully tells PEOPLE for this week's cover story.

That includes alcohol. “I feel high just on life,” she says. “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.” 

The actress and author, whose new cookbook Indulge is out now, hasn't sworn off drinking entirely ("If I really, really want to have a drink, I will," she says) but hasn't had any in recent months.

She says she began thinking about "taking alcohol out of my life" when writing her 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 tells PEOPLE.

Those years were challenging for the actress, after 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 says 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 says. "Because there was so much sadness in my life, and alcohol amplified it."

“I think it's important to really not numb emotional pain,” she says. “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."

Being in touch with her emotions, without using alcohol and paying more attention to what truly nourished her, was eye-opening for the Hot in Cleveland alum.

“I'm actually shocked at how hard it's not," she says. "Because for a long time, I leaned on it. Right now, I I love how I feel more than how the alcohol makes me feel."

As she puts it, "I found that I do naturally hum at happy."