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I get it, she wanted to be Neo?
ANDERSON, S.C. — The last thing Kaylee Muthart 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. Through the prism of methamphetamine-induced hallucinations, she sensed the world was ending.
She began to dig into the sockets of her bright 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.
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"I thought I was sacrificing myself for the world," she said. "It wasn't voices, but I thought it was real."
Muthart damaged her optic nerves when she pulled out her eyes. She has been adjusting to being blind and recovering in the month since her horrific episode.
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When it happened
Muthart's drug use did not begin with methamphetamine. She started smoking marijuana.
This past summer, she smoked a bowl of marijuana that was, without her knowledge, laced with either meth or cocaine, she said. A few months later, she began using meth by choice.
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She was on and off the drug for several months. She used other drugs as well, including ecstasy.
"I want people to know they shouldn't use drugs," Muthart said. "It manipulates your thought process. Marijuana is a gateway drug. I used to think it wasn't, but it is."
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She didn't know at the time what was real. In the moment, she was thrashing around, sure she needed to sacrifice herself.
She was trying to get her fingers further into her head. She struggled against several large men who had come out of the church.
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Muthart is bubbly in person, talking fast and staying positive. She was like that most of the time, on drugs or not, she said.
"But there were moments of being angry, when the drug wore off," she said. "You want that feeling back of being OK. You’re really not OK on drugs. It tears you apart slowly — slowly until you can’t find a way back."
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Muthart said she tried to stop using meth several times.
Katy Tompkins, Muthart's mother, said she decided in February that she was going to do whatever it took to get Muthart into rehab. On Tompkins' birthday, Feb. 5, she didn't hear from her daughter.
"I was a day too late," Tompkins said.
Moving forward
At the hospital in Greenville, about 30 miles to the northeast, Muthart began to cope with her blindness.
Everyone who becomes blind will face different challenges covering most parts of their lives, from transportation to daily living, said Jacqueline Keisler, a spokeswoman for the South Carolina Commission for the Blind.
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Muthart is working with the commission to help adjust to her new life. The assistance could range from job-readiness training, Braille literacy, orientation, mobility and computer training, Keisler said.
Muthart took some wild guesses at Braille letters and numbers while she was in her hospital room and guessed two out of three correctly.
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Tompkins said her daughter is going to wear out the family's Alexa smart speaker by asking it to play so many songs.
Muthart also enjoys pulling out a guitar and strumming one of the few songs she knows in full: Cigarette Daydream by Cage the Elephant.
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I get it, she wanted to be Neo?
