Ayahuasca Dosages

A friend recently asked me what the typical ayahuasca dose would be, and whether it was determined in part by a person's weight: a petite old woman, for instance, versus a hulking athlete. My answer below:

Depends on the curandero and the medicine. Julio's medicine was generally given in maximum 6 gulp doses--about 3 ounces, I think. He'd give less for someone who had no experience, but size was not important.
At Sachamama, Francisco gives about 2 gulps--he either adds something to the medicine or simply cooks it down so much that two gulps is effective.
At other places, sometimes I've been given 4 or 5 ounces and then a second cup after an hour or so, making it an 8-10 ounce event.
In truth, once someone is very attuned to it, they don't need to drink the medicine to have a full experience. I've had them just on smelling it while cooking (vapors) and some of my most amazing experiences occurred on nights when the spirits said they had something to teach me--before the experience--and in an effort to avoid learning I took just three or four drops. In those cases the spirits just laughed when I did and said they were going to teach me regardless of my being afraid.
So dose can range from vapors to half a pint, depending on the medicine and the person taking it.

PS: In cases like Italo's cleansing of me: He probably should not have done it as he didn't "see" what he was taking from me, despite being able to do it. In cases where you can see what's coming off or out of someone, Bertha Grove, a great medicine woman from the Southern Ute tribe, explained that all things, all energy, has a life and will of its own, and that removing an illness from someone and tossing it on the ground, or worse, taking it into yourself, would result in you or someone else winding up with that illness. That would apply to whatever was taken. Because you are dealing with spirit here, and everything has spirit. She recommended that whatever was removed, and she was speaking primarily of removing illnesses or other negative things from people, be wrapped up in a sort of invisible gauze and put on some far away planet where no other living things would ever encounter it.
In my own case, I've been taught to put those things in a place where the doctors, spirits who work with negative energy, can transform that negative energy into positive energy.
However a person does it, it's important to remember that in cleansing someone, to be sure that what is removed from them does not wind up in you, or worse, simply on the ground, where it will affix to the next passerby.
In the extreme, a person can have a full blown experience just by being in contact with someone else who has taken it. My son Italo, called into service to "clean" me one time a couple of years ago after I returned from Peru feeling very heavy with spirit, used a chacapa (leaf rattle) and Florida water to do the psychic cleansing. Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking straight and didn't tell him how to eliminate whatever he cleaned from me. Two days later, while leaving the house to run an errand with Chepa and the kids he doubled over, began to vomit--an ayahuasca vomit, not a normal vomit--then said he was going to need some help as he'd begin an ayahuasca experience. Chepa and I moved him to a calm area in the very back yard and sang to him for the full two hour experience until he came back to his normal senses.
So dose matters more in the early stages of one's relationship with the medicine--or more properly, one's relationship to the vibrant spirit of the medicine--and less once that connection with a person and that vibrant spirit has been established.
The key thing to remember is that the ayahuasca experience has little to do with chemistry and everything to do with the shift of a person's spirit which allows them to communicate with other spirits not normally visible or apparent to humans. The chemicals in the medicine allow that shift to happen, but once that shift has been made, the chemicals are of less and less use as the door, once opened, never closes.