Woman who 'gouged her eyes out while high on meth' says she is turning over a new leaf
It has been three months since a South Carolina woman shocked the world by gouging her eyes out while being high on crystal meth. Now, 20-year-old Kaylee Muthart is finally feeling like herself again.
In a conversation with People, Muthart spoke about how she was turning over a new leaf following the horrifying incident. “I actually feel like a person. I feel like myself, and I don’t feel like I’m chasing something,” she said. “It actually feels really nice. The way it worked out is the way God had it work out, that’s just the way it is… but I’d rather for it to have happened than to still be stuck in that world.”
Muthart was reportedly hallucinating from a sizeable dose of crystal meth when, to the horror of churchgoers in Anderson County, they witnessed her removing her eyeballs on February 6.
According to the 20-year-old, she remembered that she thought “someone had to sacrifice something important to 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,” she told Cosmopolitan. ”I don't know how I came to that conclusion, but I felt it was, without doubt, the right, rational thing to do immediately.”
She said that the man who she had been staying with was once driving by and asked her a question. The encounter with him, whom she refuses to identify, was her sign, she said. After the rendezvous, Muthart did what no one would expect in their wildest dreams.
“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.
“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.”
She continued: “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.”
The 20-year-old said that before she got into the habit of doing meth and ecstasy on a regular basis, she was a straight-A student in school. Interestingly, she studied the Bible while she was high on methamphetamines.
“While on ecstasy, I studied the Bible,” Muthart said. “I misinterpreted a lot of it. I convinced myself that meth would bring me even closer to God.”
Katy Tompkins, Muthart's mother, tried very hard to intervene and went so far as to record a phone conversation between the two of them in order to get a court order to put her in rehab before the said incident occurred.
After gouging her eyes out, Muthart had to undergo emergency surgery in order to "clean her empty orbital sockets." She is now home with her family and steadily recuperating.
During her conversation with People, the young adult informed that she is about to commence a three-week rehabilitation course to help her with her mobility skills. On July 3, Muthart is scheduled to undergo another procedure that would prepare her sockets to have prosthetic eyes.
Muthart spoke to Cosmopolitan about the moment she woke up from her emergency surgery: “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’m a very optimistic person, and I went in with an optimistic outlook — but, at some point, you’re going to fall down,” Muthart told People.
“That’s just life.” Muthart hopes to attend college someday and major in marine biology. She has completely strayed away from drugs and is now learning to play the guitar and piano.
“There’s definitely something inside of me that wants to say, ‘Well, what else can I do now that I’m blind?’” she said. “But something just cries out deep inside of me, ‘Go for your goal. Do what you’ve always wanted to do. Show everybody that you can do it.’”
The 20-year-old is also trying to raise money for a seeing eye dog through her GoFundMe page. As of the moment, she has raised over $50,000 of her $75,000 goal.
Muthart says she would rather be blind than be addicted to drugs, although she does get upset about her condition from time to time.
“It’s the same life, but I’m just learning everything in a new way,” Muthart told People. “Life’s more beautiful now, life’s more beautiful than it was being on drugs. That is a horrible world to live in.”