My room at the Crescent, Beverly Hills, had one amenity I’ve never seen before: a canister of oxygen.

The jokes write themselves: where but in Los Angeles would they sell you air? In fact, though, it appears that you can find personal oxygen at the Vancouver Pan Pacific, the Vancouver Opus, and the Montreal Place D’Armes, as well as various Westin properties.

I’ve heard of oxygen bars before; there is some question whether they offer any substantial health benefit, or whether oxygen actually produces anything like the mood and energy boost claimed for it. What’s more, the website of Oxia, producers of my personal oxygen canister, offers little concrete proof that inhaling mostly-oxygenated air will produce any noticeable effect.

Still, I was curious. I’ve heard two particular claims about inhaling oxygen: first, that it reduces the effects of alcohol; second, that it creates a kind of mental clarity high, improving energy, memory and concentration.

My very very unscientific test, therefore, was to open the canister of Oxia and breathe some of it in a normal state but without attempting anything unusual; some immediately before reading a passage of text in a foreign language; and some after a martini, when I had a mild, pleasant buzz.

My unscientific conclusion: this does absolutely nothing whatever. I felt no particular change of mental alertness after inhaling the Oxia in a totally sober state, and it did not take away the very light sense of intoxication after a drink. It also had no discernible effect on my translation speed or clarity — though, as I said, I have no actual metric for this.

In addition, I didn’t find it all that pleasant to do. The Oxia canister is, as pictured, small but heavy; there is a plastic mouthpiece that slides upward, and then one starts the flow of air by pressing a trigger. Inhaling by mouth from an awkwardly-shaped plastic mouthpiece is not soothing. The discussions of oxygen inhalation on erowid suggest that people imagine a psychoactive effect that actually comes just from being in a tranquil environment and taking long, deep breaths; this may be true, but in that case, the tubes used at an oxygen bar must be more comfortable to breathe through.

I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call the whole idea a scam, but it strikes me as one of those things, like magnetic wine clips, that people believe in because they want to; a self-administered variety of placebo. I recommend, instead, wanting to believe in the benefits of lying flat on your back in bed and breathing deeply through your nose. It almost certainly works just as well, and it’s free.