Continuous treatment with drugs is an inevitable prerequisite for many disease conditions. However, the amount of adverse side effects induced by the respective drugs during therapy urges the need for developing alternative or supportive treatment strategies. Even though rarely analyzed under the perspective of associative learning, reframing continuous drug intake as a learning process may open a new path for treatment optimization. In this context, behaviorally conditioned pharmacological effects, obtained by means of associative learning, have been successfully implemented as strategies to interfere with disease progression in animal models of rheumatoid arthritis and glioblastoma. The growing knowledge about the neuropsychological mechanisms of associative learning and memory provides a number of fascinating challenges and opportunities which allow the optimal use of the still largely under-studied phenomenon of “learned” placebo responses. Harnessing the efferent and afferent communication pathways between the brain and the immune system together with end-organ functions as hardware, and sophisticated associative learning protocols as software, behavioral conditioning of pharmacological responses might serve as an activator of the body-own pharmacy and a very valuable supportive treatment tool for the patient’s benefit.