Drink in moderation thanks to this slowly-shrinking wine glass!

The Issue:

Some people would like to drink less, but they have a hard time sticking to a small number of drinks. If only there were some sort of overcomplicated technical solution to this problem!

Proposal:

This “shrinking wine glass” (Figure 1) could be a solution to excessive drinking. Such a glass consists of two components: a normal wine glass base and a snugly-fit cylindrical top (cup) portion that can slide up and down the base.

Over time, the cylinder slowly slides down, reducing the maximum capacity of the glass.

***Fig. 1:*** *This cylindrical “cup” portion of the wine glass slowly slides down the glass, moving from configuration A (“normal capacity”) to configuration B (“almost no capacity”).*

Conclusion:

The exact mechanism by which this functions has not been totally worked out, but it’s obviously the case that it would need to be non-trivial for the user to “reset” the glass.

The same general approach (in a slightly different form factor) should also work for beer.

PROS: Could probably actually be implemented with relatively little random wine leakage.

CONS: The real deal-breaker here might be discouraging the user from just getting another glass.