Valerie Bertinelli on Doing Cocaine in the Van Halen Days

I’LL TAKE THE 80’S FOR 200, ALEX –

Mar. 10, 2022 – He 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.