Johnny Cash’s Religious Epiphany in a Chattanooga Cave

Tragedy is sadly a constant truth in the music business. As a result of this, many musicians have lost their lives to torturous forces. Too many musicians have come to this demise and it perpetuates the problem and the list of folks who have succumbed to it. However, there is one individual who danced on the edge of this fatal arc and lived to tell the tale in hopes of spreading awareness. That individual is the late Johnny Cash.

It is known that Cash suffered from alcoholism and drug addiction at the rise of his career in the late ’50s. Consequently, Cash spiraled into manic depression and tried to take his own life in 1967. Luckily, Cash failed and what the failed attempt would provide him was invaluable. That near-fatal day led to Cash’s rediscovery of the divine.

Johnny Cash’s Cave Expedition

Cash was an extremist and not one to do anything the easy way. Thus, when he set out to end his life he followed the same ideology and ventured deep into a cave near Chattanooga, Tennessee. Knowing that many of these unguided expeditions led to death, Cash entered the cave with the “hope and intention to join that company,” according to Cash: The Autobiography. After crawling and walking for hours, Cash’s flashlight died and he laid there waiting for his last breath in utter darkness.

However it was during those hours that Cash found God, or according to him, God found him. He wrote in his autobiography, “There in Nickajack Cave, I became conscious of a very clear, simple idea: I was not in charge of my destiny,” and “I was not in charge of my own death. I was going to die at God’s time, not mine. I hadn’t prayed over my decision to seek death in the cave, but that hadn’t stopped God from intervening.”

Escaping With His Life

Even though Cash had found his will to live, the cave paid this no mind. After his epiphany, Cash would escape the cave directing himself solely by memory. It is unclear how long it took Cash to reach the light, but when he did, his wife June Carter Cash and his mother were there waiting for him.

It was on that day when Cash promised to get clean and he did for seven years. In his autobiography, he closed out the anecdote by writing, “I rebuilt my connection to God…By November 11, 1967, I was able to face an audience again, performing straight for the first time in more than a decade.” Unfortunately, Cash relapsed in 1977 but would pass from diabetes in 2003.

Photo by ITV/Shutterstock