Cash credited Carter with helping him get sober
Thought the 1960s Cash famously dealt with a serious addiction to drugs and alcohol. His marriage was crumbling under his frequent absences, infidelities, and addictions and he was known to cancel or simply miss concert appearances.
He was, in the course of his life, arrested seven times, though despite his outlaw reputation he never spent any significant time in jail. Most of his offenses were related to drugs or alcohol, including a 1965 arrest after Cash crossed the border from Texas to Juarez, Mexico and was caught returning with over 1,000 amphetamine tablets in his possession. That same year he also accidentally set fire to a portion of the Los Padres National Forest in California near when his camper caught fire, burning hundreds of acres of forest and killing many of the region’s endangered California condors. He was sued by the federal government for the crime, becoming the first person ever sued by the U.S. government for starting a forest fire.
While Carter was herself, allegedly dealing with addiction issues (according to her son John Carter Cash’s 2007 book Anchored in Love: The Life and Legacy of June Carter Cash) Cash did credit her with helping him toward recovery. The popular story he told had him wandering into a cave on the Tennessee River prepared to die only to find God and return from the cave to find June and his mother waiting with open arms. Cash said that was the day that he swore off pills, although Robert Hilburn’s 2013 biography of the singer points out that that the cave in question would have been flooded at the time.