A woman named Kaylee Muthart from South Carolina, who tragically ripped out her own eyes, has opened up about the events that led to her life-altering decision.
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Kaylee shared that she dropped out of school at 17 to work part-time jobs and save for a car.
She also struggled with heart arrhythmia—an irregular heartbeat—which affected her academics and caused her grades to slip.
Despite her challenges, Kaylee was awarded a scholarship to study marine biology, a field she had always dreamed of pursuing.
However, at 18, she began drinking alcohol and smoking, influenced by a family history of addiction, while juggling her part-time jobs.
By 19, she experienced an intense and unfamiliar high, which marked the beginning of a downward spiral in her life.
Talking to cosmopolitian, she said: “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.
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.