ANDERSON, South Carolina – A woman who clawed her eyes out while high on methamphetamine is speaking out for the first time since her horrifying story made headlines across the nation last month.

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

Muthart began by explaining 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, it became an addiction.

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

WARNING: This story contains graphic and upsetting details. Posted by Cosmopolitan on Friday, March 9, 2018

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 told Cosmopolitan. "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 said she went to a church thinking her friend who had sold her the methamphetamine had gone there, then wandered along the tracks. She said while it was daylight, she felt everything was dark except for a light post where she hallucinated a white bird was perched.

Muthart's mother, Katy Tompkins, told PEOPLE 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. 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," Muthart explained to Cosmopolitan. "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 on 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.