If so, I've got a few questions for you...
1) What motivated you?
2) Did you succeed and/or how far did you get?
3) What were the major barriers you experienced, if any?
4) What method(s) did you use to learn?
Thanks guys... looking forward to hearing your stories.
1. Latin women
2. Yes, my Spanish gets rarely used these days but it is still somewhere between conversational and fluent. I have no problem reading Spanish newspapers and books or watching Spanish television. However I do struggle with Puerto Rican and Dominican Spanish at times. They are both very bastardized, slang-heavy variants of the language.
3. None, really. Lots of opportunity to use it while learning helped quite a bit. It is vital that you pursue Castilian Spanish as opposed to South American Spanish (with the exception of Colombian Spanish) as S.A. is so regional and each country has it's own obnoxious slang.
4. Textbooks and tapes to get a rough handle on things, and then practically complete immersion for two years. Immersion is KING when learning a foreign language. If you cannot move to another country where the language of your choice is spoken exclusively, simulate it. I.E. if you're learning French only watch French TV, read French books and publications, play video games in French, get some French language partners, etc.
There are tons of podcasts for every language out there. Satellite TV options, you can always get books and movies in a given language, etc. There are also websites out there where people can trade language time. I.E. you find a French speaker who wants to learn English. For a half hour you converse in English and a half hour in French or vice versa.
It would help quite a bit if you could tell us what language you're trying to learn as they all have unique tactics for studying ESPECIALLY East Asian languages.