The Q Agenda: Dreams, Addiction, and Finding Our Tribes

We’re back with another episode of The Q Agenda, only on LATV.

Actor and filmmaker Emrhys Cooper shares how coming out informed his creative journey. Rainbow Hill Recovery’s Betsy Spier reflects on her relationship with sobriety and how she helps other queer folks do the same. Lianna will return with another edition of Hot Takes with Hot Cakes, this time about Roe v. Wade. And finally, we’ll share a clip from the LATV docu-series, Living y Ready.

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Emrhys Cooper couldn’t wait to get out of his small hometown of Devon, England.

His first creative outlet was ballet, so he moved to London to pursue a career as a professional dancer. He found success performing in the West End. Though he had fond memories of his family, it was here in the UK capital he came into his identity and found his tribe.

When he moved to Los Angeles at 23, he thought the red carpet would be rolled out for him when he landed at LAX. It didn’t exactly play out that way.

While breaking into the industry as a backup dancer, Cooper worked many odd jobs. He struggled to build a name for himself but stayed driven and determined.

“I had dreams of being an actor,” he says on the show. “I just didn’t figure that out until a little later.”

Once we gained access, he started making moves, and his career took off. And after years of acting, he decided to take a seat behind the camera.

“I set up a production company called Idylwild Pictures with my husband,” he goes on to say. “We have a platform and we want to use it for positive change and influence, and we have some great queer-leading projects.”

The company recently launched the show “Historical Homos” on Amazon Prime, which has been renewed for a second season. As for his acting career, he will be seen in Billy Clift’s The Lair reboot coming to HERE TV in January 2024.

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Next on the show is Betsy Spier, the chief clinical officer at Rainbow Hill Recovery, an addiction treatment facility for the queer community.

“Rainbow Hill is this amazing place that deals with shame and resilience, addiction [and] mental health,” she says on the show. “We do all kinds of different things—not just the regular relapse prevention, not just regular talk therapy. What’s your passion and where did it get lost? Because addiction takes it away, makes us afraid to express ourselves. Being queer in this world makes us afraid.”

When Spier came of age in the 1950s and 60s, being a lesbian was not culturally accepted. Without role models or resources, she struggled to find her place in the world. The sexual revolution of the 1970s changed things, and that’s when Spier came out. Drugs played a big part in her story.

“That’s one of the reasons I do the work I do today,” she goes on to say, “because it’s so near and dear to me.”

Her early adult years unfolded in “gay ghettos” and soulless restaurant jobs across Los Angeles. She frequented gay bars and took part in the feminist movement of the era.

When she got sober in 1985, unsure what she wanted with her life, she took to her bedroom side table. There, she had books on psychology and philosophy. In that moment, she pivoted.

Spier wound up getting a master’s degree in clinical psychology and went to work in addiction afterward. The trauma, abuse, and poverty she encountered in the years that followed were so profound that it kept her going.

“The funny thing about addiction is it’s all about isolation … and shame is attached to it,” she says. “Now you bring in … being [queer] and there is even more shame on top of it.”

In her work at Rainbow Hill Recovery, she works with patients to overcome their fears and their shame to reignite passions that were lost in the name of substance.

As for getting help if you need it, she believes it’s about cultivating community.

“Find your tribe. Find people who you can talk with,” she says. “The more we can talk about it, the less we hide. We have to be visible. We have to be more visible than we’ve ever been.”

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On the show today, our hosts will also explore how minority stress informs mental health. As getting help gets less and less stigmatized, what kinds of traumas — small and large — might you consider unpacking?