Arman Kaymakcian was convinced his life was over. Years of childhood sexual abuse had spiraled into addiction, crime, and despair so deep he believed death was his only escape. Standing on the brink of suicide at age 27, he says everything changed in a single, unexpected moment — one he now believes was the voice of God leading him away from the tracks and toward redemption.

Today, the husband, father of three, and author of He Calls Me Redeemed: A Memoir of Childhood Sex Abuse, Heroin Addiction, Hope, and Redemption shares his story to point others toward hope in Christ. “I know what it is to be desperate,” Kaymakcian told CBN News. “I know what it is to feel trapped, to feel hopeless, lost, broken. I also know what it feels to be redeemed by Jesus Christ, and I know what it is to feel freedom on the other side of pain.”

Kaymakcian’s downward spiral began early. He endured sexual abuse as a child, trauma he says pushed him toward drugs as a teenager. What started with marijuana escalated into narcotics and eventually heroin addiction in his early 20s. His life quickly unraveled into crime, arrests, and isolation.

“I’ve robbed everybody,” he recalled. “I … had problems with law enforcement, problems in the street. … Just miserable. You would’ve crossed the street if you saw me walking. … Just desperation, hopelessness, absolute misery in every capacity you could think of.”

By his late 20s, the addiction had consumed him completely. Each morning brought what he described as “absolute misery,” intensified by the physical agony of withdrawal. “I’m suicidal because I’m so miserable from the addiction,” he said. “Dope sickness is just a horrific thing to go through.”

One day, after using the last of his heroin in Long Branch, New Jersey, Kaymakcian decided he could not endure another moment. “That’s it. I’m just gonna jump in front of the train. I can’t do this anymore,” he remembered thinking as he headed toward a nearby station.

But as he walked, he passed a hospital — and felt an unshakable internal prompting to go inside instead. He obeyed. That detour, he now says, saved his life.

“I went in, I told ’em what was going on,” he said. “They put me in the psychiatric ward there.”

During his stay, his mother asked if he needed anything. Unexpectedly, he requested a Bible from his nightstand at home. When she brought it, he opened it at random — to Psalm 88, a passage often described as one of Scripture’s darkest laments.

“I read that Psalm and it was like, if I could have written God a letter in that moment, it was everything that I felt,” he said. “I just broke in half, face to the floor, tears on the ground. I just begged Jesus to save me.”

Kaymakcian entered rehab soon after and began rebuilding his life from nothing. He had no diploma, job, or home. Still, he wrote a list of dreams — including a seemingly impossible line: “Write a book about how Jesus Christ saved my life.”

Years later, that line became reality. Now sober for more than 15 years, Kaymakcian says his faith transformed not only his circumstances but his desires and mindset. “I don’t wake up every morning and have to fight not going to use drugs,” he said. “It’s a complete shift and change in mindset. It’s a new life. You’re a new creation.”

He now lives what he once considered unimaginable: a stable family life marked by joy and gratitude. “My life has been an absolute blessing for the last 15 years,” he said. “We’ve done so many incredible things … It’s been an unbelievable experience since I gave my heart to the Lord.”

Through his book and public testimony, Kaymakcian hopes readers will wrestle with their own spiritual questions — especially the one that changed everything for him: “Who is Jesus?”

For a man who once believed his story would end beneath a train, the answer, he says, became the beginning of a completely new life.