How Much Prison Time Did Johnny Cash Actually Serve?

Well, not really.

As Biography tells us, Johnny Cash struggled with substance abuse of various flavors, a fact he was pretty candid about. He was arrested at least seven times, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Sometimes these arrests were for misdemeanors, like being drunk and picking flowers out of a stranger's garden in the wee hours of the morning, but he was also arrested for starting a forest fire in California, and for smuggling amphetamines into the United States from Mexico. Cash was quoted as saying, "I took all the drugs there are to take, and I drank." It wasn't until his second marriage, to June Carter, that he began to pull himself out of his tailspin. He relapsed, but credited his wife and his religious faith with helping him recover. 

As for prison, though? He managed to avoid it. His misdemeanor arrests got him overnight stays in jail, but not prison itself, his 1968 album Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison notwithstanding. A visit is not a stay.

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