The drop-in to Pat: powerlessness "since the period of Castro" (speaker ID flagged)

pivotal · 4 Nov YDAU, 1300–1500h

• When: Wednesday 4 Nov YDAU, 1300–1500h, Ennet House — Pat Montesian's resident drop-in hours.
• What: In the scene's run of unattributed resident monologues to Pat, one speaker names himself "Alfonso": he wants it understood he has no denial — he knows he is a drug addict, has known his addiction "since the period of before Miami" and his powerlessness "since the period of Castro" — and that standing up in meetings to say so is no trouble. What frightens him is that the knowing hasn't made him stop, and he presses the Program's core paradox as a plain question: how does admitting powerlessness produce the stopping? He tells "Mrs. Pat" he now hopes for power, and asks whether that hope is wrong: "Is hope of power the bad way for Alfonso as drug addict?" The book's only first-person Alfonso — IF the identification holds: the speech prints no surname, and the ID with Parias-Carbo is a flagged contextual chain (see Dating notes).