Lucy Hale said this week “life feels so good” after getting sober, also recounting her “rock bottom” at age 32 before deciding to give up alcohol.

Hale, who is two-and-a-half years sober, told People she “made the choice” to “do everything I could to get sober” on Jan. 2, 2022.

“It was the scariest choice in my life, but also it’s been the best gift,” Hale said. “When I made that change, everything else changed. My whole life has changed.”

The Pretty Little Liars actress recalled “hitting rock bottom” at age 32 shortly before making the big decision. “I always had a desire to change, but with any form of addiction, you become powerless to this obsession,” she said.

For Hale, addiction started in her teens. “Since a very young age, I always felt alone and misunderstood,” she said, adding that alcohol “shut my brain off.”

“It worked for me for a while, until it turned really dark,” she said.

The journey to sobriety involved many turns. “It took many, many, many years, many relapses, many dark moments, many falling on my face quite literally, but figuratively as well to figure out what was working in my life, finding out why I was drinking, because removing alcohol is just one part of it,” she said.

If she had continued, the singer said, “I would’ve lost everything I cared about.”

Hale’s rise to fame on Pretty Little Liars helped her navigate the alcoholism in her 20s. “Without my career and without that creative outlet, I don’t know if I would’ve made it,” she said. “I think that show and my love of what I do was my North Star truly, it really gave me purpose, and still gives me purpose. But I was constantly in this cycle of extreme depression and anxiety while having to show up to work and be on. And that ‘being on’ fueled even more drinking…. I was caught in this cycle that I couldn’t get out of.”

Nearing three years later, Hale said sobriety now can still be “painful and uncomfortable,” but that “my life feels so good now that I wouldn’t give that up for anything.”

“I still have to make the choice every day like, ‘OK, today I’m staying sober and today I’m choosing me,’ but that goes deeper than just not drinking,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m at a place in my life where I can talk about the things that used to bring me so much shame.”

This weekend, Hale will accept the Humanitarian Award at the 34th annual awards luncheon at Friendly House, an L.A.-based addiction recovery center.

“When I got sober, my intention was never to be the poster child of sobriety,” she said. “But when I began speaking about it, it came from a place of needing to heal and take my power back.”