Turns out spanking isn’t reserved for porn! Melissa Todd tells real-life stories of women who use corporal punishment as treatment for mental health and addiction

Portia* tried several different therapists and brands of anti-depressants before at last discovering a cure for the severe depression which had blighted her last decade.

She went to visit a local woman in a perfectly average terrace house, lifted her skirt, pulled down her pants and bent over her kitchen table, to submit to the belt, birch, slipper, hairbrush, strap, and finally, cane, for an hour.

Afterwards she dressed herself, handed the woman £120 for her time and efforts, and went on her way, jubilant, energised, ready to face another fortnight.

An unconventional cure for depression

I know, because I’m the woman she pays. I’m thrilled I can help, and not only Portia, but several other women, who of late have discovered the healing power of a good sound thrashing.

“When I’m being hit it’s simply agony,” Portia says. “There’s nothing sexual about it for me. I can’t understand how anyone could get pleasure from it. But when it’s over it feels as though I’ve crawled out of a black hole into the light. I feel giddy, full of purpose and promise. The world seems hopeful again.” Portia has abandoned the pills and therapy and signed up to pain. 

Pain and healing through the ages

Corporal punishment, as devotees will eagerly explain, can make you extraordinarily happy: elated, freed from sadness and fear. Pain floods the brain with endorphins. Monks practised flagellation in the 12th and 13th centuries, understanding how it might allow the recipient to relinquish painful memories and trauma.

When you’re being beaten you can’t be sad, ruminate on past miseries, worry about the misery that may well be on its way. You can’t scroll thoughtlessly through social media, try not to forget aunt Maud’s birthday, try not to remember that embarrassing moment last weekend.

Why pain can be therapeutic

Spanking is gaffer tape for the voices in your head. Suddenly, there is only the pain. You enter a state of flow, forge a spiritual encounter with the self, in which you cease to do and start to be. Pain is always totally absorbing.

It needs to be: it’s an evolutionary tool, a self-preservation instinct, designed to warn you your body is under assault and you need to do something, to deal with it. 

Of course, if you’re being thrashed by a professional, you can’t do anything but surrender to it: the long build up to this moment, the email correspondence you’ve undertaken, the fantasies you’ve exchanged, the memories you’ve shared, have led you both to agree this is something you need, deserve, and to which you must submit.

You are forced to be overwhelmed by the sensations, breathe through them, feel your mind swiftly empty, your flesh flood with hormones. 

Spanking therapy and addiction recovery

Caning has also been successfully used as a means to cure drug and alcohol addiction: you get the high you crave, while the physical damage is superficial and speedily healed: a chance to experience the endorphin rush without the catastrophic side-effects.

Andrea* is in her early 40s, married, with a high-powered job in the city. For the last nine months she’s been visiting me to help her relax and deal with her insomnia.

As soon as I open the door she likes to be in role, playing a bratty teenager sent home early from school for breaking the rules, while I’m her furious step-mother. At first she resists my efforts to discipline her: answers me back, refuses to get across my knee and submit.

Read more: What Is BDSM?

Gradually she yields, as I threaten and insist, and when she ceases to resist I see the tension visibly drain from her being. For Andrea, being thrashed does bring sexual pleasure. She adores the rosy red glow on her buttocks, the welts that itch as they heal, make her feel insufferably horny and yearn for another caning.

But it’s also about surrendering control, just for an hour; letting someone else take charge and make decisions. “It’s the best way to relax and step outside my own head,” she explains. 

Mental health benefits of spanking

“At work I spend all day telling people what to do. I like it. I’m a control freak usually. That’s why I have to be forced to switch off by someone I trust totally to understand what I need, read my body language and know when I’ve had too much or not enough.

“It makes me feel euphoric. I go to work the next day energised and ready to take charge once more. Being submissive isn’t about being powerless. It’s about choosing to surrender your power temporarily.”

Enduring any kind of ordeal gives the individual an opportunity to taste the bitter unpalatable side of existence and return refreshed to their usual life of luxury. Why else would people go camping, backpacking, abseiling? When I find myself petulant, sated, bored, weary, indifferent, tetchy, I know exactly what I must seek out to give life fresh piquancy. 

Thank goodness I have a willing partner who understands that need and is thrilled to fulfil it. Human beings do not thrive when they exist unchallenged. They become bored, sulky, irritable, they lose their sense of humour and perspective.

They start to whimper when they lose a sock or can’t get their preferred parking space. A taste of true agony will help you put minor annoyances into perspective, become calmer and easier to be near. And it’s fun.

Spanking is addictive too, and seeking out your next hit, as it were, could well become an obsession - but the health-giving, life-affirming kind. The spankos I know tend to be happy, energetic and fiendishly attractive. I see clients in their 90s still skipping about gleefully, during and after their fix.  Give it a go.

*names have been changed

Americaned: Sex and Grief across a continent by Melissa Todd is published on the 8th August.