Sticking a tube up your nose and breathing oxygen out of a Erlenmeyer flask may not be what most Ohio University students had in mind between classes today, but when I saw the Oxygen Bar table on the second floor of Baker University Center, I couldn’t pass it up.
The table was set up as part of Ohio Univeristy Program Council’s “Candyology” event today, the last of three events during its “Geek Week” program.
I was pretty intrigued; prior to today, the closest I had ever been to breathing pure oxygen was laughing gas when I got my wisdom teeth removed. The Oxygen Bar, brought to Baker by a company called Airheads, offers participants the chance to breathe pure oxygen with aromatherapy.
There were 12 different flavors, each with a different therapeutic effect.
Teresa Peters, the company representative and operator of the Oxygen Bar, tried multiple times (unsuccessfully) to show me how to stick the plastic tube up my nose and connect it to one of the oxygen supply hoses. I immediately jumped for the orange flavor, allegedly a mood lifter. I also sampled the peppermint (invigorate) and the spearmint (chill out), but decided to pass up the cinnamon (male aphrodisiac) because I still had some classes to get through — wouldn’t want to get too distracted.
So, did it work? Well, I’m not laying on the newsroom floor “chilling out,” but I do feel pretty invigorated — though that could have been the two cups of coffee — and if nothing else, at least I can tell my parents that I stuck tubes up my nose and breathed gases out of a beaker to calm me down.
OK, maybe I won’t tell my parents that.
bv11101@ohiou.edu
