Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Health & Body

Risky business
Albert Einstein and Evel Knievel were both looking for the same high.
By Michael Alvear
[07/22/99]

Urge
Episode 4: Busty for an Oriental
Over the years my looks haven't changed, but the world has.
By Tracy Quan
[07/22/99]

Sharing your life
Why do people favor organ donation but balk at the final OK?
By Mike Perry
[07/21/99]

Soft-contact safety questions
A new study shows a higher risk of infection with soft contacts, especially if worn overnight.
By Dawn MacKeen
[07/19/99]

Urge
White-collar gay porn stars
By day they have high-paying, respectable jobs, but on nights and weekends they seek the fame that only money shots can bring.
By Jared Mitchell
[07/19/99]

Complete archives for Health & Body

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Debra Ollivier

July 23, 1999 | I'm sitting in an oxygen bar on the Sunset Strip with a cannula up my nose. The cannula is attached to a hookah, which itself is attached to a hidden oxygen generator. My hostess, a thin Gen-Xer with a 24-karat bellybutton, fumbles with the tiny respirator wires trying to get the air going. "I'm, like, totally out-of-it today," she says. "I can't get this one wire straight." More fumbling. Nothing happens. "Just call me Airhead." Airhead has given me a choice: A regular 20-minute oxygen session for $13, or a booster of Joy, Clarity or Energy for an additional $2. I've been watching too much news, driving too much and warding off compassion fatigue. I go for the Joy.

Located just under the verdant crags of the Hollywood Hills, O2 is L.A.'s first oxygen bar and it's the only place in town where you can legally stick something up your nose, inhale and get, well, kind of high. It owes its existence in part to Woody Harrelson, hemp impresario and Hollywood's man with a social conscience, and it fits right into a city where you can buy aromatherapy and herbal colon cleansers at your local grocery store. With its space-age, hippie-chic decor, O2 is part Hollywood hookah den, part casbah. The building itself is festooned with a huge banner that reminds L.A. motorists to get their priorities straight. ("EAT. DRINK. BREATHE. LOVE," it screams.) Celebrities come and go. Everything is made of hemp (but don't smoke the curtains, we're told). Nouvelle vegan cuisine is served up in the small restaurant along with drinks like the "Love laced Daiquiri" made with strawberry guava nectar, don quai, saw palmetto, damiana and muira puama, whatever that is. Reading material is strictly PC. One pamphlet promotes elephant-free circuses; the other promotes fish-free eating, and it begins with this: "Imagine reaching for an apple on a tree and having your hand suddenly impaled by a metal hook, which yanks you, the whole weight of your body hanging on one hand, out of the air into an atmosphere in which you cannot breathe." There goes the halibut.

Airhead has finally got the Joy going. Putting a cannula up your nose and breathing in charged oxygen is a little like inserting swizzle sticks in your nostrils and trying to inhale fizz. It takes a moment to get used to, but it's not altogether unpleasant, and I sit back for some sort of mildly euphoric experience. To my left, a couple leans back on a purple hemp cushion, quietly inhaling 02. To my right, a man the size of a Ford Explorer has both a nasal cannula and cellular phone strapped to his face. "Hey Bob," he honks, "where are you? What the hell are you doing in Palm fucking Springs? Do you -- Bob? Hello? You in a fucking tunnel?" Outside, the traffic roars. A fuzzy rim the shape and color of an onion ring hugs the city's skyline. My neighbors and I are breathing gas that contains 85 percent oxygen. Air usually contains 21 percent oxygen; in L.A. and other big metropolises the oxygen content dips as low as 12 percent, and that number keeps heading south.

Next page | Oxygen lets your brain process the data it needs to turn on the coffee machine