Short answer. It can go either way. Under Article 15 of the Revised Penal Code, intoxication is an alternative circumstance — it lightens the penalty if the drinking was not habitual and not planned as courage for the crime, but it makes the penalty heavier if the drunkenness was habitual or deliberately sought.
What the law says
The intoxication of the offender shall be taken into consideration as a mitigating circumstance when the offender has committed a felony in a state of intoxication, if the same is not habitual or subsequent to the plan to commit said felony; but when the intoxication is habitual or intentional it shall be considered as an aggravating circumstance.
Revised Penal Code, Article 15 — Alternative Circumstances: Relationship, Intoxication And Education. Read the full provision →
Why intoxication is an "alternative" circumstance
Article 15 groups intoxication with two other conditions — relationship, and the offender's degree of instruction and education — and calls all three alternative circumstances. The article defines them as those that must be taken into consideration as aggravating or mitigating according to the nature and effects of the crime and the other conditions attending its commission. In plain terms, the same fact can cut for you or against you, and the court decides which way it points from how the crime was actually done. So drunkenness is never automatically an excuse; it is a fact the judge weighs, and the burden is on whoever invokes it to show which kind of intoxication was present.
When it lightens the penalty
Drinking works in the accused's favour only when two things are both true: the intoxication was not habitual, and it was not subsequent to the plan to commit the crime. That second condition matters — a person who drinks to steel his nerve before doing what he already meant to do gets no benefit, because the liquor was part of the plan, not something that clouded a sober intention. Ordinary, non-habitual drunkenness that genuinely dimmed the offender's reason and self-control is the situation the law treats as mitigating, on the view that his will was weakened rather than fully criminal.
When it makes the penalty heavier
The same article flips the result in two cases: where the intoxication is habitual, or where it is intentional. Habitual means the offender is a person given to excessive drinking as a settled practice, not someone who happened to be drunk once. Intentional means he drank on purpose to embolden himself for the crime. In either case the law refuses to treat the drink as a weakness deserving leniency and instead counts it against him as an aggravating circumstance, which pushes the penalty toward its higher range within the limits fixed for the offence.
What this does not decide
Article 15 only adjusts the penalty for a crime that has otherwise been proven; it does not create a defence and it does not erase guilt. Being drunk does not by itself show that a felony was committed, and it will not overcome clear proof of intent where the law requires intent. Nor does the mitigating side apply as a matter of course — the accused must put forward the facts that show the drinking was neither habitual nor pre-planned, and a bare claim of having had a few drinks is rarely enough. Because so much turns on how the incident is characterised, anyone facing a charge where drink is a live issue should take specific advice on how Article 15 is likely to be applied to the facts.
Related provisions
- Revised Penal Code, Article 15 — Alternative Circumstances: Relationship, Intoxication And Education