9 Badasses Who Performed Surgery On Themselves

9. Self Trepanation - Amanda Feilding

Most of us need a hole in the head like we need, well, a hole in the head - apart from Amanda Feilding. She is a British Countess, artist and drug reformer who, in the early 70s, got it in her head that there were some things she wanted to get out of her head.

Feilding learned about the ancient practice of trepanation in the 1960s. It is the of drilling a hole in the skull to release pressure on the brain and/or any evil spirits that might have taken up residence in there. Fielding, however, hypothesised that the fusion of the cranial bones in childhood prevents adults from experiencing "higher states of conciousness" and resolved to drill a hole in her dome to prove it.

Shockingly, she was unable to find a reputable surgeon to perform the procedure so, at the age of 27, she took matters into her own hands. Using a pedal operated dentists' drill and a pair of sunglasses to prevent the blood from running into her eyes. According to Feilding herself, the procedure was a roaring success and over the next few hours she began to feeling a rising feeling of elation and euphoria that had absolutely, definitely nothing to do with the litre of blood that she lost.

When she's not drilling her skull, Fielding supports research into psychoactive drugs such as LSD and ayahuasca. Now, I'm not saying that this has anything to do with wanting to drill a hole in your head to access a higher astral plane, but the two might be loosely related.