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There’s now a potential cure for alcoholism using psychedelics, and two New Mexicans said the treatments are changing lives."I was drinking anywhere from four to six mixed drinks, followed by six to 10 beers, and I did this every night,” Rob Rhatigan said.Rhatigan was a young man who was struggling. He tried going to Alcohol Anonymous meetings and quitting cold turkey but he always went back to the bottle."I booked a four-day jungle excursion,” Rhatigan said.He went to Peru to hire a shaman to perform an Ayahuasca ceremony."It's a rather thick tea,” Rhatigan said.It's a brew of plants considered a spiritual medicine.It was pretty awful, he said.It makes people sick and contains a psychedelic chemical known as DMT. Rhatigan said it helps explore the mind and can cure an addiction."It's a bit hard to explain. It's a very personal experience and everyone's experience is different,” Rhatigan said.It's a concoction that is illegal in the United States."It's something you can't go into lightly,” Rhatigan said.Rhatigan said his first attempt didn't work, but he tried again."I knew unquestionably within that ceremony then and there in the jungle that my relationship with alcohol is over,” Rhatigan said.Years later, he's still sober."I just don't have any desire to drink,” Rhatigan said."We raise money from donors,” Heffter Research Institute Medical Director George Greer said. The Heffter Research Institute is based out of Santa Fe and funds psychedelic research to treat conditions and addictions.Their studies use psilocybin, which is a chemical made in a lab to mimic the hallucinogen found in psychedelic mushrooms."It's definitely an emotional, psycho-spiritual reorientation that happens,” Greer said.It has an impact similar to Ayahuasca."They can step back from themselves and look at their lives from a distance. They get perspective--oh this is what I’m doing to my life and I don't want to do this anymore,” Greer said.The institute funded a University of New Mexico study where 10 people took psilocybin in a controlled setting.Doctors asked the group to lie with their eyes closed on a couch as they were monitored."I believe that it has huge potential,” Greer said."Drinking went down about two thirds and a lot of people stopped drinking completely,” Greer said.The results were so promising that the Heffter Institute is paying $3 million to expand the study, this time at New York University."It is a treatment,” Greer said.That could help millions and millions of people with alcohol problems recover and get their lives back and their families back.Too many may look like unconventional treatments but these New Mexicans swear by them."I can't recognize this compulsion to drink because it's just not with me anymore,” Rhatigan said.The psilocybin studies are approved by the FDA and done in controlled medical settings. As for Ayahuasca, the U.S. State Department warns Americans traveling to Peru to try this that there are reports of tourists getting scammed or attacked. In 2012, one American died after drinking the tea.