Psychologist blinds woman with drain cleaner - because she wanted to be disabled

For most people becoming blind would be a living nightmare - but for Jewel Shuping it was the fulfilment of a lifelong dream.
Jewel has Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID), a condition in which able-bodied people believe they are meant to be disabled.
 






























Her need to lose her sight was so strong that in 2006 she decided to blind herself - by having a sympathetic psychologist pour DRAIN CLEANER into her eyes.

According to Jewel, her fascination with blindness began early in childhood.
She said: "When I was young my mother would find me walking in the halls at night, when I was three or four years old.
"By the time I was six I remember that thinking about being blind made me feel comfortable."

Jewel: using a white stick in a park in Raleigh, North Carolina.

As a child she would spend hours staring at the sun, watching sunspots and solar storms, after her mother told her it would damage her eyes.
In her teens she started wearing thick black sunglasses, getting her first white cane aged 18 and becoming fully fluent in braille by the age of 20.
Jewel said: "I was 'blind-simming', which is pretending to be blind, but the idea kept coming up in my head and by the time I was 21 it was a non-stop alarm that was going off."