Woman who removed her own eyes last month opens up about why she did it and explains what life is now like
A 20-year-old South Carolina woman has opened up about what life has
been like since she removed both of her eyes last month while she
was high on methamphetamine.
Kaylee Muthart says: "Life’s more beautiful now, life’s more
beautiful than it was being on drugs. It is a horrible world to live
in."
Kaylee, who struggled with drug addiction from a very young age, said
she gouged out her eyes because she thought that by so doing, she was
sacrificing herself for the world.
She said: "I thought I was sacrificing myself for the world. It wasn't voices, but I thought it was real."
Before pulling out her eyes, Kaylee, who was high
on methamphetamine, began hallucinating. The last thing she saw was a
light pole morphing into a white dove. The trees appeared to curl
downward and the skies darkened as if a storm were gathering. She sensed
the world was ending, so she began to dig into the sockets of her green
eyes, believing that somehow by plucking them out she might save the
world.
The visions would be the last thing she ever would see as she knelt
alongside railroad tracks, screaming in pain after gouging out her eyes
and damaging her optic nerves.
Below is her story as told to
Cosmopolitan:
Just over a month ago, I could see. Or maybe I should put it this
way: I had both my eyes, but they didn't help me notice how dangerous my
life had become.
Then, on February 6, my world went black.
I had been a straight-A student in Anderson, South Carolina—I was
even in the National Honor Society when I left school at age 17, midway
through eleventh grade. Between working long hours to save up for a car,
and missing school because of a heart arrhythmia, my grades had begun
to slip. I thought taking time off from school would be better than
tarnishing my academic record and would leave me with a better chance at
securing a college scholarship to study marine biology, which I'd
always wanted to do
By age 18, I was drinking alcohol socially and smoking pot often,
while working diligently at my part-time job. I suspected I was prone to
addiction, since it ran in my family, so I actively avoided what I
considered more serious drugs.
But when I was 19 last summer, I was smoking pot with an acquaintance
at his house and got a strange high. Later, I googled the symptoms that
surprised me the most — numb lips and feeling like I was on top of the
world. I'd long been a religious Christian; the high made me feel
particularly close to God.
I think the pot I'd smoked had been laced with either cocaine or
meth, both of which are stimulants. I was surprised, since I’d never
perceived weed as a gateway drug, but here I was, being exposed to
substances I never wanted in my life.
Because I'd gotten the pot from the friend I smoked with, I felt like
he'd betrayed me and left my job to distance myself from him. I didn't
end up going back to school.
I didn't have a job and my relationship with my boyfriend of two
years began to deteriorate. To cope, I kept smoking pot and drinking
alcohol and started taking Xanax recreationally. On the verge of our
breakup, I had a mental breakdown. (Months later, in February 2018, I
was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It made sense, since when I felt
happy, I felt
super happy, and when I felt down, I felt deeply
depressed. The turbulence left me especially susceptible to drug abuse,
my doctors later told me.)
I finally got a new job, but having lost my boyfriend and a series of
close friends, I was lonely and unhappy. I remembered the way I felt on
the laced weed and sought that kind of peace again.
At the end of August, with another acquaintance, I decided to smoke
meth for the first time. I stayed up for nearly three days and
experienced hallucinations I wasn't expecting — when I looked in the
mirror, I thought I saw blackheads coming out of my face and I spent an
hour picking at my skin until I drew blood. When my roommate dropped me
off for work that evening, I was too embarrassed by my welts to go
inside. Soon after, as a result of missing work, I lost my job.
When I sobered up, I watched a video I'd filmed when I was high, and
it totally freaked me out — the girl I saw, who kept talking and
talking, seemed so different from the real me.
After that, I steered clear of meth but felt so low that I asked one
of my roommates, who dealt drugs, for ecstasy. At the time, the
substance seemed safer than cocaine or meth, since I knew people used it
to feel more free when they partied. I thought it would make me feel
more confident; when it delivered, I started taking it once or twice a
day on most days until the end of November.
While on ecstasy, I studied the Bible. I misinterpreted a lot of it. I
convinced myself that meth would bring me even closer to God.
So, after Thanksgiving, when I was feeling particularly lonely, I
smoked meth with a friend. Within two months, I progressed to snorting
it, then shooting it as often as I could by myself or with friends. I
was surrounded by heavy drug users.
Two or three times, I tried to stop: I carried meth in my pocket all
day as if to prove, "This stuff is my bitch," but I always ended up
taking it.
My mom realized I was struggling with mental-health issues and drug
abuse but later said she felt helpless; I wouldn't commit to going to a
drug rehab or a psychiatric facility, and without proof that I was a
danger to myself, she couldn't have me committed. Although I didn't even
have a place to live — I'd been sleeping at different people's houses
since moving out at 17 — I told her I had everything under control and
avoided speaking to her.
On February 4, I finally saw her again. She'd found a rehab facility
for me, and I agreed to go the following week. I later learned she had
recorded our conversation, during which I said I didn't want to be in
the world because it was too evil — the proof she felt she needed to get
a court order and commit me.
But the next day, I bought meth from my drug dealer. After a friend
tried to stop me, I shot up that night. I took a larger dose than I'd
ever used before.
On the morning of Tuesday, February 6, I was still high. I was
hallucinating, so my memories are fuzzy, but based on what I remember
and details I've pieced together from other witnesses, here's what
happened: Thinking the friend I'd gotten high with had gone to church, I
wandered there along a railroad track. Even though it was 10:30 in the
morning, everything looked dark and gloomy apart from a light post,
where I thought a white bird was perched.
It was then I remember thinking that someone had to sacrifice
something important to right the world, and that person was me. I
thought everything would end abruptly, and everyone would die, if I
didn't tear out my eyes immediately. I don't know how I came to that
conclusion, but I felt it was, without doubt, the right, rational thing
to do immediately.
I got on my hands and knees, pounding the ground and praying, "Why
me? Why do I have to do this?" I later realized this wasn't a personal
religious calling — it was something anyone on drugs could have
experienced.
Next, a man I'd been staying with, who happened to have a Biblical
name, drove by and called out the window, "I locked up the house. Do you
have the other key?"
A sign, I thought,
that my sacrifice is the key to saving the world.
So I pushed my thumb, pointer, and middle finger into each eye. I
gripped each eyeball, twisted, and pulled until each eye popped out of
the socket — it felt like a massive struggle, the hardest thing I ever
had to do. Because I could no longer see, I don't know if there was
blood. But I know the drugs numbed the pain. I'm pretty sure I would
have tried to claw right into my brain if a pastor hadn't heard me
screaming, "I want to see the light!" — which I don't recall saying —
and restrained me. He later said, when he found me, that I was holding
my eyeballs in my hands. I had squished them, although they were somehow
still attached to my head.
I remember praying and sensing people fill in around me. There must
have been seven or eight men, in addition to the pastor, holding me
down. I fought so hard against their restraints that my wrists hurt for
weeks after. At some point, paramedics arrived, and I was so combative
that they had to sedate me with ketamine. I was transferred to a
stretcher and airlifted via helicopter to Greenville Memorial Hospital
in South Carolina.
While all this was happening, my mom was on her way to the courthouse
with her recording to get me legally committed. She was too late.
At the hospital, doctors performed an emergency surgery to fully
remove what was left of my eyes in an attempt to preserve my optic
nerves and to prevent infection.
I woke up two days later. At that point, the sedatives and traces of
recreational drugs were still in my system, but I remembered what
happened. Everything was dark, and I knew I was blind, but when I sensed
my mom by my side, I knew I would be okay.
I was in the hospital for a week, during which I suffered from bad
headaches behind my eye sockets and particularly in my temples. They
continued to crop up intermittently for about a month. I was offered
hydrocodone for the pain but only took it once or twice — I really
didn't want to take anything besides Tylenol. I was determined to stay
off drugs. Luckily, I didn't experience any drug-withdrawal symptoms.
When I asked friends and family members who visited me what I looked
like without eyes, I was told there's red tissue (muscle filling the
socket) and a white spot (my optic nerve endings) where my eyeballs used
to be. When my sockets are fully healed, hopefully next month, I'll get
eye prosthetics to fill out my face, although they won't help me see.
After a week, I was transferred to a psychiatric in-patient treatment
facility. I was scared shitless about how I would be treated, but the
facility turned out to be amazing, with group-, music-, and animal
therapy, plus a really supportive staff. That's where I was officially
diagnosed with bipolar disorder and began taking lithium, a mood
stabilizer, plus Risperdal, an antipsychotic medication.
Through therapy, I learned to start accepting my new reality.
When I went home with my mom last week, the first thing I did was
walk around and touch everything to get a sense of my environment. My
mom has been really supportive — she won't let me go up or down the
stairs by myself out of fear I'll trip, but she gives me verbal cues to
get around independently and got me an iPhone that reads text aloud.
Activities I used to enjoy, like playing guitar and learning piano,
are going to be harder now that I'm blind, but I'm still optimistic.
When I stub my toe or my knee, I think,
Well, it probably saved me from walking into a wall and hitting my face.
I still want to go to school to become a marine biologist — although
I'm blind, I can still go underwater to feel the pressure and deepness.
In the meantime, in addition to my outpatient psychiatric treatment,
I've gone to the Commission for the Blind for physical-therapy training
with a cane, and joined a new church to avoid the drug users I knew at
my old one. I plan to attend 90 Narcotics Anonymous meetings in 90 days.
Once I raise enough money on GoFundMe, I'm going to get a seeing-eye
dog.
Of course there are times when I get really upset about my situation,
particularly on nights when I can't fall asleep. But truthfully, I'm
happier now than I was before all this happened. I'd rather be blind
than dependent on drugs.
It took losing my sight to get me back on the right path, but from the bottom of my heart, I'm so glad I'm here.
