Scott and Lori Rickett have very different life stories.

Scott Rickett comes from a broken home. His mother reared him alone; his father, the only example of manhood for him, was an “outlaw, alcoholic, and drug user.”

Lori Rickett’s story couldn’t be more different. She grew up in a Christian home with nurturing parents who did their best for their children.

Yet both of them became addicted to methamphetamines and ended up in trouble with the law. In the process, their son was taken from them.

Thursday night, they shared their stories of overcoming addiction during Crossover Ministry’s appreciation banquet. Crossover seeks to help individuals overcome addiction through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

“My momma raised me, I believe to the best of her ability,” Scott Rickett said. “It didn’t take long for me to learn about drugs and alcohol. I was introduced to meth, and I spent 15 years chasing that high. My dad gave me my very first line of meth. It gave me a fulfillment nothing else in my life had ever given me.”

Lori Rickett said her first encounter with meth was at age 15.

“I was immediately in love,” she said.

“I loved the rebellion of being a bad girl,” she said. “My parents were blind to my deception so my deception ended up bigger.

“I was in a misery I can’t explain,” she said. “I was cocky and rebellious in my drug use, but I was also ashamed.

“We would go to Enterprise to buy groceries in the middle of the night because I didn’t want to see anyone who knew my parents at the IGA,” she recalled.

Every day, she was more miserable.

“I couldn’t save myself, and I couldn’t save (my husband). At 24, the DTF knocked down our door,” she said. “I was charged with child abuse and other crimes. I was so shocked because we didn’t live like all the dopehead people I knew. My son was a year and a half. He was happy, he wasn’t sick all the time.”

She said she remembered the agents being shocked that their house was clean.

“At 6:30 in the morning, I called my father from the Covington County jail,” she said. “He said, ‘Thank God.’ He knew something was wrong, but he didn’t know what.”

Even after her arrest, she continued to deceive her parents, she said.

“(Then assistant DA Walt Merrell) was telling my daddy I was a drug addict and manufacturer. I still denied it.”

“I was on the computer with my dad looking at treatment programs that were four months,” she said. “Walt wouldn’t take anything less than a year at Teen Challenge.”

She said within three months she had “given her life to the Lord” and decided to tell the truth.

“I had to tell my parents the truth,” she said. “I told my parents ‘I am everything that the newspaper said I was. I am so sorry.’

“At that moment, I was loose,” she said. “This (speaking tonight) is a little bit more freedom.”

Scott Rickett had a similar experience.

“In prison, I cried out to Jesus, he reached out and pulled me out,” he said. “The love I found at Crossover was like nothing I ever experienced in life.”

“God has restored our family,” he said.

But the restoration wasn’t easy.

“We got our son back, but it took a long time,” she said. “Last year, we were here at this banquet and didn’t have our child. I was estranged from my parents because Scott and I had gotten back together and they didn’t understand. I thank everybody here who prayed for us. With y’all’s help and God’s love, we made it.”