To answer your last question, I never thought the stock would drop below $4, but it did & might again! However, by having a mixed strategy [buying/trading] for the last couple of years, I was able to benefit short & long-term.
Had you booked some profits when the stock went to $7 [from $5], as well as traded it when it dropped to $3.50, or -50% just this past Dec., you might have recovered some of your unrealized losses by now as the stock has indeed been very volatile, hence tradable!
My approach has been to trade in tranches as this addressed the directional scenarios, ie: I would buy 2 or more blocks at different prices/would then sell one block/ then used the returned capital [+ profits/or use this somewhere else] to cover my next purchase when the price went down, etc. Given the general market volatility, at any given time, I may have 3 or more tranches of a particular stock on an ongoing basis [of very volatile stocks that I don't feel are falling knives ofc], and this way, I was able to take advantage of most market rallies by selling the profitable block [not necessarily DCA'ing as this strategy works best not for short-term trading necessarily, but for long-term investing].
The only time I would sell all blocks at the same time, would be if even after the DCA average, the profit would still be worthwhile. For example, say I had 1500 shares at an ACB of $3.80, then I might sell all today for $4.22 as the profit would be $630 [- comm.]. But if my ACB was above $4, I would just sell the lower tranche. The profit would be slightly less by not selling all, but then you would have another block to sell if shares were to go higher the day after you sold.
However, I would not recommend this approach to anyone who is not comfortable trading.