Johnny Cash Reportedly Used To Down 100 Pills Daily, Followed By A Case Of Beer

It's well known that Johnny Cash had drug and alcohol problems, but new details from Cash's long-time manager show that his habits were far worse than many believed.

In the new book The Man Who Carried Cash, author Julie Chadwick uses audio diaries, taped phone calls, photographs, letters and notebooks made by Cash's manager Saul Holiff to dive into what Cash was like to manage.

While films like Walk The Line go into the late musician's drug abuse, Chadwick shared details with the Daily Mail that show just how bad it got.

She said, "In the movie there is some allusion to him taking pills, being out of it and collapsing on stage, drinking and partying and stuff, but there were times when I was writing the book especially between 1965 and 1966 I thought, 'I don't know if I should put all of this in because people aren't going to believe me.'

"There's so much happening in a short piece of time - car crashes, whole tours being missed. At one point he was taking 100 pills a day washed down with a case of beer."

Up Next: Fifty Years Later, Johnny Cash's Rejected Theme Song For James Bond's "Thunderball" Is Still Pretty Great

The documents found by Chadwick go into Cash's life on the road and how touring caused him to escalate his use.

"At that time speed was really common because musicians had to travel huge distances to go to shows," she said. "Johnny says how he felt like promoters just take a dart and throw it at a map and say go here go here. His drug problem started that way and just escalated from here."

More: Miley Cyrus Poses With Johnny Cash (Kind Of)

Another anecdote talks about how Cash was once found passed out in his motor-home and had to be physically carried into the venue for his performance. Scenes like this are one reason the book is titled as such.

"The title of the book, The Man Who Carried Cash, has a double meaning - on one side was that Saul walked round with a briefcase full of tens of thousands of dollars and he used to pay the talent at the end of the night out of that in wads of cash," the author said. "But there were also times when he carried Johnny figuratively and literally - like when he carried him to the stage by his elbows after he passed out."