Johnny Cash Entered a Cave to Die. He Found God Instead.
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2026
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, by 1967, Johnny Cash had become one of the biggest names in country music, though his addiction to amphetamines had pushed him into a vicious cycle of hospital visits and arrests. After days without sleep and hundreds of pills, Cash wandered into Nickajack Cave believing he would never come back out. But inside that dark cavern, Cash found God and began a long journey toward redemption.
Pastor Greg Laurie, author of Johnny Cash: The Redemption of an American Icon, shares the story of Cash’s struggle with addiction and the faith that helped reshape his life and career.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:14.1 | This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories, the show where America is the star |
| 0:19.5 | and the American people, coming to you from |
| 0:22.7 | where the West begins in Fort Worth, Texas. |
| 0:26.6 | In 1967, Johnny Cash stumbled into Nicka Jack Cave in Tennessee, intent on killing himself. |
| 0:34.8 | Greg Lorry is here to tell the story. |
| 0:39.3 | Lori is the author of Johnny Cash, |
| 0:48.5 | the redemption of an American icon. Let's take a listen. I would say at this point in this life, |
| 0:56.3 | Johnny's trying to live in two worlds. You know, his sister, Joanne, put it this way. Johnny was like two people. |
| 1:02.6 | She said Johnny was one person and cash was the other. And she said cash caused all the trouble. |
| 1:10.3 | And he was always struggling with different things throughout his life and reaping the consequences of it. |
| 1:16.1 | And I think Johnny had too much of the world to be happy in his relationship with God and too much of a relationship with God to be happy in the world. |
| 1:20.3 | He was in sort of this no man's land trying to live in two places at the same time. |
| 1:26.4 | And it was causing a lot of internal and external |
| 1:29.7 | conflict and problems in this life. |
| 1:33.3 | Well, I guess Christoperson pretty well summed it up |
| 1:37.6 | in the song he wrote about me. |
| 1:39.9 | He's a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction. |
| 1:43.8 | And Patrick Carr, and a story about me, said, |
| 1:47.8 | Johnny Cash, the Indian and the white man's camp. |
| 1:51.0 | Maybe that's it, or maybe I'm the white man and the Indians camp. |
... |
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