Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) is a serious psychological condition that gives able-bodied people a strong desire to be disabled. It’s what made this woman from North Carolina purposely blind herself by dropping drain cleaner into her eyes!
Jewel Shuping, 30, revealed that she’s been obsessed with blindness since childhood. “My mother would find me walking in the halls at night, when I was three or four years old,” she said. “By the time I was six, I remember that thinking about being blind made me feel comfortable.” So she would spend hours staring at the sun, hoping that it would damage her eyes. The obsession increased as she aged, and by the time she was a teenager, Jewel had taught herself to move around in thick black sunglasses.
Eventually, Jewel claims to have found a psychologist willing to help her become blind. In 2006, the duo put numbing eye drops followed by a couple of drops of drain cleaner in each of her eyes. The pain was excruciating, but the thought of going blind kept her happy. “My eyes were screaming and I had some drain cleaner going down my cheek burning my skin,” she said. “But all I could think was ‘I am going blind, it is going to be okay.’”
