The South Carolina woman who gouged her own eyeballs out during a meth-induced psychotic episode has adjusted to living in blindness and is much happier now – more than six years after the horrific act forced her to quit using drugs.
Kaylee Muthart, 26, was left permanently blinded when she ripped out her eyes with her bare hands and squished them believing the act of self-harm would save the world after snorting and injecting tainted methamphetamine in February 2018.
She now maintains her life is better than it was before her world suddenly went dark.
“Of course there are times when I get really upset about my situation, particularly on nights when I can’t fall asleep,” Muthart said, according to The Daily Mail.
“But truthfully, I’m happier now that I was before all this happened. I’d rather be blind than dependent on drugs.”
The Anderson resident was an honor student who pumped out straight-As in high school. She would often smoke marijuana on weekends before the harrowing incident, but said she would avoid hard drugs due to addiction issues in her family, the outlet reported.
Muthart got hooked on crystal meth after a friend gave her a joint laced with the drug when she was 19-years-old. Within a year, she went from smoking meth to injecting it.
The high she got from the highly addictive drug made her feel closer to God, she told the outlet.
Muthart had agreed to go to rehab the night before she took a larger-than-normal dose of the drug — a last hurrah that spurred delusions where she believed the world was “upside down” and needed to “sacrifice her eyes” to go to heaven.
She was sitting outside South Main Chapel and Mercy Center on Feb. 6, 2018, when she got on her hands and knees and started praying before the traumatic incident.
“I remember thinking that someone had to sacrifice something important to right the world, and that person was me,” she said.
“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.”
She said the church pastor found her screaming, “I want to see the light” while she held both eyeballs in her hands, adding that she would have mutilated her brain if he hadn’t arrived, the outlet reported.
It took a team of police to calm her down before she was airlifted to Greenville Memorial Hospital’s trauma unit, where at least seven doctors held her down before cleaning what was left of her orbital sockets to prevent infection.
The traumatic incident was the final push to get Muthart to go to rehab and leave her drug addiction behind.
Wearing prosthetic eyeballs, which she received in 2020 to appear more normal to the outside world, Muthart said she works hard to remain positive despite her self-inflicted disability.
“Activities I used to enjoy, like playing guitar and learning piano, are…harder now that I’m blind, but I’m still optimistic,” she said.
“When I stub my toe or my knee, I think, ‘Well, it probably saved me from walking into a wall and hitting my face.”
