He had been using drugs almost continuously for years. He was separated from his first wife, Vivian Liberto, with whom he had four daughters. His relationship with June Carter, which had been developing since they met on the road years earlier, was complicated by his drug use and his erratic behavior. His finances were disordered. His career was in serious trouble.
He walked into the cave. His flashlight eventually died. He lay down in the darkness, expecting to die.
His account of what happened next is a religious one, and he gave it consistently for the rest of his life. He felt, in the dark of the cave, that he was not in control of his own death — that it was not his to end. He found his way out of the cave using only his memory, working backward through the passages he had entered. He emerged into light.
June Carter and his mother were waiting outside. How they knew to be there is a detail the accounts do not fully explain. His mother had been told by Cash’s sister that he had gone to the cave.
He came home. He began getting clean. He returned to performing sober, by his own account, on November 11, 1967 — his first sober performance in more than a decade. The cave, the emergence, the beginning of sobriety: this sequence is the turning point in the standard narrative of Cash’s life, and it is worth noting that Cash himself described it this way and returned to it repeatedly in interviews and writing. He married June Carter on February 26, 1968 — his birthday, and the same day the At Folsom Prison album was released by some accounts. The biographical and commercial resurrections overlapped almost exactly.