Maninder comes out of Tihar jail in New Delhi. (AP)

New Delhi, May 23: People trying to escape stress are more likely to turn to traditional intoxicants such as alcohol rather than a stimulant like cocaine, according to psychiatrists familiar with substance abuse.

Former cricketer Maninder Singh was arrested on Tuesday when he was picking up cocaine from a Nigerian whom the police had been tracking for several days. Delhi police sources quoted Singh as saying that his drug abuse was linked to family problems.

But psychiatrists said that while some people do tend to hook themselves to intoxicants to deal with emotional stress, the choice is usually alcohol, cannabis, or even sedatives and not cocaine which, as a stimulant, is a thrill-seeking drug.

“Cocaine can give rise to euphoria but, in the real world, most patients trying to get out of a ‘low’ might drink,” said Sunil Mittal, director of the Delhi Psychiatry Centre. And not everyone seeks escape through substance abuse, he added.

“Substance abuse is often not a conscious decision — and it can be driven by a number of psychosocial factors,” Mittal said. “Poor skills to cope with stress, previous access to substances, and peer influence may all play a role in driving a person to drug abuse.”

But people learn to deal with severe stress in different ways. One person may visit a gym, another may listen to music, while a third may hit the bottle, said a psychiatrist who’s been treating patients of addiction for two decades.

According to psychiatrists, drugs are also associated with a certain kind of lifestyle in India. “If you’re on that circuit, you have easy access,” Mittal said.

Scientists have also found a connection between addiction and mental illnesses.

“As many as six in 10 people who have an illicit drug use disorder also suffer from mental illnesses,” Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in the US, said at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association earlier this week.

“Diagnosis of a substance use disorder must be recognised as a sign of increased risk for mental disorder, even if no mental disorder is evident at the time of diagnosis,” Volkow said at a special session on the science of addiction.