i personally give up hope, the sense that someday i will overcome my schizophrenia. instead i incorporate it as a new paradigm, a new side of me so that by knowing it's there i know the cause and be able to handle it more easily, and also by avoiding portraying it as a insurmountable monster so as to convince it is just a trick of the mind on me and move on. no regrets, no cries, no self-pity. that's more easily said than done sometimes but that's the drive

i've never taken a pill so far chosen to take a more holistic approach and i consider that i'm not in a worse condition than i would if medicated and this gives me the extra benefit of considering drugs as a last resort of sorts if nothing else works, if i was heavy on drugs that probably would give me some sense of despair since it seemed there was no exit left, so if you need help seek a psychologist rather than a psychiatrist. also seek support groups with similar conditions in your area or online (that step we seem already making) since we humans are social beasts rather than solitary wanderers and we need the comfort of knowing we are not alone and somewhere there are people going trough the same pains as we; that might be a group instinct bias pushing us over to integrate but i feel that much more appeal with someone on the same track knowing what i am talking about rather than talking generic abstraction like "it will all turn all right" good intended as they may be, i prefer being down with someone that understand my pain than being pushed up to party by someone trying to compulsively cheer me up. i think we live in a society that overall is trying real hard for everyone to feel good because that way we are most likely to buy the junk that everyone is trying to sell each other on this post-capitalist distopia, but i am digressing, the point is i think i have the right to misery and to suffer, not passively but on my own terms, to reach nirvana, whatever that means, on my own pace. so here's my advice: don't put a bright face just for the sake of others, don't represent for them or you will turn into a caricature of yourself, if that way you are turning away some around you, maybe you are pushing the right ones and who's left are the ones you can count on