I wanted to share this story with you, I was unaware that such a disease existed – Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID)
For most people, going blind is their worst nightmare, but for this North Carolina woman it was a dream come true. Jewel Shuping, 30, was so desperate to be blind that she poured draining cleaner on her baby blues to wipe out her eyesight – and she couldn’t be happier. She suffers from an illness called Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) – a disease that causes able-bodied people to strongly desire a disability. “I really feel this is the way I was supposed to be born, that I should have been blind from birth,” Shuping told Barcroft Media. The afflicted woman knew she wanted to be blind from a young age and would attempt to harm her eyesight by staring at the sun while ‘blind-simming,’ or pretending to be blind. By the time Shuping turned 21 the idea of being blind was “a non-stop alarm that was going off” and she sought the help of a sympathetic psychologist to help her carry out her ultimate desire in 2006. The psychologist gave her eye numbing drops before sprinkling a few droplets of draining cleaner onto each pupil. “It hurt, let me tell you. 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.” Dr. Michael First, professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University says that people who suffer from BIID can’t control their need to be disabled. “These people are aware that this feeling of theirs is unusual – they know it is coming from within them. They can’t explain it,” he said. Shuping is now studying for a degree in education and is hoping to help other blind people live an independent life. She hopes that by sharing her story it will encourage other sufferers of BIID to seek professional help.
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