Ashley Smith says her faith helped her kick a meth addiction and befriend her captor during a seven-hour ordeal in which she was held at gunpoint.

In March of 2005, escaped convict Brian Nichols followed Smith to her apartment in Augusta, Ga., and took her captive in her home. Nichols tied Smith up in her bathroom and demanded to know if she had any drugs, and when she admitted she had meth, Nichols asked her to take the drug with him. Smith says she refused, but still managed to befriend her captor, and he eventually allowed her to leave the next morning.

Smith says the moment Nichols asked her for drugs was a turning point in her life, as she came to realize Nichols was struggling with some of the same issues she had been dealing with. "We were just trying to find our way," she told CTV's Canada AM. She said she refused to do the drugs with Nichols, but instead tried to connect with him on a personal level, and ultimately managed to gain his trust. She also embraced the incident as a turning point and an opportunity to kick her drug habit. "Right then and there, I saw it as my chance to change," Smith said.

Smith spent the night gaining Nichols' trust, reading to him from Rick Warren’s "The Purpose Driven Life" and attempting to connect with him on a personal level. The next morning, Nichols allowed Smith to leave to go see her young daughter, and Smith called 911 from her car. Police arrived at her house shortly after that, and Nichols surrendered peacefully.

Nichols had escaped from a Georgia courthouse on the morning of March 12, 2005, when he fatally shot a judge, a journalist and a sheriff's deputy. A state-wide manhunt ensued, during which Nichols shot and killed a federal agent, before winding up outside Smith's apartment complex.

He followed her to her apartment door at 2 a.m. that night and used a gun to force his way in and take her captive.

After his arrest, Nichols was convicted of 54 criminal charges and sentenced to multiple life sentences with no chance of parole.

Smith admits she had been in a "downward spiral of drug addiction" up to that point. She said she'd turned to drugs after her husband had died in front of her in a "brutal murder" several years earlier, and she lost custody of her young daughter as her habit grew worse. But after the incident with Nichols, Smith managed to quit the drugs and get her life back on track.

Smith wrote about her experience with Nichols in the non-fiction novel "Unlikely Angel," which has been adapted into the recently-released film, "Captive." The film stars Kate Mara as Smith and David Oyelowo as Nichols.

Smith says she spoke to both actors about her experience during the film's production. "They are both just really amazing people," she said. "It seemed that they were there to make a film to change people's lives, not just to make a film to make a paycheque."