It is possible to have what I think you mean by automatic response level without living in the country. I myself sucked at English until University: I hated learning it, I could not understand it spoken, and I could not read well a mildly complicated text written in it (say something written in the economist or NYT).

Today, except for pronunciation, I would consider myself fluent, though of course not native. While I do use English daily, I have never worked in an English-speaking country until well after I became fluent. The one thing that made it click was watching a lot of video content without subtitles