Woman who clawed out her own eyes reveals reason

Kaylee Muthart

(WARNING: This story contains some graphic details which may be upsetting to some readers.)

A young woman who clawed out her own eyes while high on methamphetamine is speaking out for the first time since her horrifying story made headlines across the nation.

Kaylee Muthart, 20, of Anderson, South Carolina, told her story to Cosmopolitan in a piece titled "I'm the Girl Who Clawed Her Own Eyes Out. This Is My Story."

Muthart explained how she had dabbled in marijuana, but suspected the marijuana had been laced, then moved on to Xanax, ecstasy and then methamphetamine.

"I convinced myself that meth would bring me even closer to God," Muthart explained. "So, after Thanksgiving, when I was feeling particularly lonely, I smoked meth with a friend."

Within two months, she became hooked.

"I progressed to snorting it, then shooting it as often as I could by myself or with friends," Muthart told the magazine.

Muthart said after months of avoiding her mother, she saw her on Feb. 4 to discuss the possibility of rehab.

"She'd found a rehab facility for me, and I agreed to go the following week," Muthart said. "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."

Muthart said she scored more meth the following day and shot up a larger dose that she'd ever done that evening. The next morning, Feb. 6, she gouged her own eyes out while high on meth.

Muthart's mother, Katy Tompkins, told People Magazine her daughter heard voices that told her to rip her eyes out in order to make it to heaven.

"So, I pushed my thumb, pointer, and middle finger into each eye," she recalled. "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."

The pastor, Muthart said, later told her she was "holding (her) eyeballs in (her) hands" when he found her and that she had "squished them, although they were somehow still attached to (her) head."

Muthart was allowed to go home March 2 after spending weeks in the hospital. She is now completely blind.

Her mother has set up a GoFundMe page to raise funds for a guide dog, as well as give updates in her recovery.