Valerie Bertinelli Did Cocaine With Ex Eddie Van Halen Until She 'Couldn't Take It Anymore': 'It Was Everywhere and Easy to Get'

Mackenzie Phillips' recent viral confession about doing cocaine with Valerie Bertinelli while filming One Day a Time didn't come out of left field, as the latter has openly discussed her past drug use over the years.

Back in 2022, the Food Network star admitted she had regrets over how often she did drugs alongside late ex-husband Eddie Van Halen.

"I am a prude now but I [partook] as well for a few years there until I just couldn't take it anymore," the mom-of-one spilled on the "Literally! With Rob Lowe" podcast.

"We all did in the '80s," host Rob Lowe, 62, replied, to which Bertinelli, 66, said, "Cocaine was everywhere and easy to get."

"It was before the bill had become due and we just didn't know," the Parks and Recreation star noted. "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."

Bertinelli stopped dabbling in the drug after she found herself constantly staying up too late.

"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," the cookbook author 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!'"

The dad-of-two pointed out that they were both "lucky that we got off the ride, because a lot of people follow it all the way down."

"I think it's better to crash and burn than to be incrementally boiled alive by it," Lowe added. "I think that's what happens to a lot of people who can 'recreationally dabble.'"

Bertinelli acknowledged how Van Halen — who was 65 when he died from throat cancer in 2020 — struggled with 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," she shared.

"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," Bertinelli recalled. "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."

The musician's drug use is one of the things that led to their split, as while the romance started out on a high note, "it rapidly declined into drugs alcohol and infidelity."

"Nothing that makes you feel loved, wanted and cared for. Nothing that screams ‘soulmate,’ that’s for sure," she said of how it took a toll on their romance.

The pair married in 1981 and separated 20 years later.