Tristyn Stoop is from Jackson, Tennessee. She's a University of Memphis Lambuth graduate.

AMORY, Miss. (WTVA) - An event in Amory targeted an uninvited guest that can wreak havoc on families and communities.

"Because nobody invites drugs into their home. And as parents, sometimes the children come in and they doing drugs, or have done drugs, and the parent doesn't know," said Tujuana Hampton, the organizer of The Uninvited Guest. "So that's the uninvited guest. The drugs come in without our knowing."

The Sunday evening program was held to inform children that drug use isn't the answer, regardless of what some of their peers may say.

"Sometimes kids start doing drugs because they think it's cool," she explained. "The peer pressure of it sometimes can overweight their minds. So if we give them innovative material, then they would know that drugs is not cool."

To get this point across, people who have battled addiction themselves spoke directly to guests.

One speaker, Terrilyn Murray, shared how her struggle with alcoholism led to someone's death and her own imprisonment.

She shared that she was driving while intoxicated and crashed off the highway near West Point, rolling over several times.

"The person who was in the vehicle with me did not survive the accident," Murray said. "That accident caused me to lose all of the skin off my back. I have one little light scar there now but the whole left side was pretty much damaged."

She said she was charged with aggravated DUI and spent time in jail, breaking her parents' heart.

"Because being an only child raised in a Seventh Day Adventist Church, you know, and to do something to stray away like that, you know, that hurts," she shared. "But over the years you don't really feel like you have an addiction, you just feel like you're doing something but you can stop whenever you want to."

The list of speakers also included doctors and pastors.

The event's co-organizer and husband to Tujuana Hampton, Edsel Hampton said love is an important part in the fight against addiction.

"We've been doing this for about seven years," he said. "We started out at the church. We would have a prayer meeting, and we'll feed the kids. And most of the kids is single parents, and so we just wanted to reach out to them and reach out to the community to encourage them that someone here loves you as well as your parents love you."

Amory Police Chief Ronnie Bowen was asked to attend the event and even led the group in prayer.

He said 365 days a year, they deal with drugs in the community.

He said this spiritual-oriented event is held to show kids that people do care and that the world is what they make it.

"So it's just an outreach that they've found in their heart to reach out to those families and to those children to let them know that there are people that care for you," the chief said. "You know, the world's not all totally bad, but there's a lot of decisions we can make that can turn it bad for us."

Kids were enticed to the event with door prizes that included gift cards.

Cocaine, methamphetamine, vaping, and other topics were also discussed.

Organizers said they aim to post the full program on YouTube.

That link will be added here when it becomes available.