Are you sure your anecdotal confirmation confirms this?

The higher cognitive function that leads you to read books about quitting could be exactly the mechanism the GP describes.

From what I remember, Easy Way even tells you to keep smoking when you start the book and to stop reading if you don’t feel ready!

FWIW, I also credit that book with me finally quitting the habit.

It does yeah, I think that was what made my mind open up to the book early on. An intriguing enough nonfiction twist, I had to see where it was going with this.

I was expecting a mix of "here's why it's bad" and "here's the good stuff, and at which milestone dates you'll notice them" maybe.

The stuff I already knew and believed in really strongly.. for 20 minutes until the third 'last' cigarette of the month.

If anyone else is stuck in a holding pattern of quitting it's worth giving it a shot. Promise no affiliation haha, go see if your local bookshop or charity shop has a used copy for 20p (the pages will be a deep yellow, of course)

I read a different Easy Way book of Carr’s (I understand they are all similar) but felt like by the end I’d been scammed or something - he repeatedly tells you the Way works, and trust the process, and then the book … finishes?

Is it really just that the Easy Way is a self-referential thing and the Way is itself to think about the Way a lot and in doing so convince yourself or your subconscious that you’ve reached some sort of solution despite having not? Or was there some set of concrete messages I might just have missed?

Is the act of reading the book the thing itself?

There is definitely an element of self-hypnosis!