Food as Oblivion

I was talking with a friend the other day about binge food. You know, as in what you choose when you really binge out. It's usually junk, but not always. High refined carbs are good --- pasta with butter is a favorite of mine, as is bread and butter. But it almost has to be a type of food that must be like hard liquor or shooting into a vein. High sugar. Lots of crunch, salt, grease. Enough to lose myself in.
I don't use food as a simple fuel, I use it as oblivion. I use it to block feelings, to blunt uncomfortable stuff like anger and envy and sadness. The more I work on feeling those feelings (oh, ugh) I see how much anger is there. It's quite shocking, actually. I've been struggling with lots of uncomfortable feelings since I was elected to the board of my community choir. 120 members. Lots of competing viewpoints, complaints, ideas. I'm feeling swamped. Twice over the last two weeks I came home and before bed ended up eating too much. Last week was the big show down with the leftover pork roast. Last night it was nibbling on the coq au vin. I had even made it to bed (safe, I thought) when I realized my oily paint brushes from work hadn't been washed out. So I went down to wash them at the kitchen sink and then, the fridge magically opened... luckily, I got it shut again before I did too much damage.
But it's incredible how automatically these feelings drive me to the food, and the fridge. I have learned to open the refrigerator before I'm even aware of feeling "off" or doing it. But my body knows what it wants and hasn't bothered to notify my consciousness. Right now I'm doing step work, a twelve step method of dealing with my feelings very popular in my OA programme. But it's damn tough. For over 40 years I've stuffed those feelings down with the food, and when I don't it all feels like too much. I don't have the luxury of blunting them with food. And so I feel overwhelmed. And I have to sit down and write about that feeling. It feels soooo uncomfortable. But if I don't deal with it, I'm just back at square one. So I try again, remembering the old OA maxim that if you have a problem and you eat over it, you now have two problems! Fuck. It hurts!