I'm not in that boat. My parents had me in night-classes for art at the age of 5 (because I'd drawn some very typical 5 year-old crap, and they thought I was a savant or something).
I took art all through school, while taking night-classes for fun, all the way up until I was about 14 (at which time the night classes weren't teaching me anything new, and were just a waste of money). I continued with Art Honors classes all through High School, and took 3D animation & design classes in College.
Resources; 'Bridgman's Guide to Drawing from Life'... it's easily the best resource for an artist interested in drawing the human form.
I never bothered with manga-styled artwork, because I figured it was going to become far too popular one day, and would - probably - become very limited. I think I was right, in a lot of ways, looking through the webcomic, webart communities now.
However, I took an almost 5 year hiatus from drawing (didn't have the desire, or drive to do it), which only ended this January. It's not something that you just hop back up onto... I've been drawing almost constantly for the past 6 months, and I'm NOWHERE near as good as I was when I was 16, 17, etc.