Alcohol of course slightly dulls pain. If we look at an endurance race and both competitors are super hydrated and filled with glycogen/salts but one has a slight derangement (less active) in pain recognition, wouldn't that athlete in theory be able to push harder while feeling the same exertion as the sober athlete?
I'm talking like 1-2 shots or 16 ounce beer

To get to a dose that would influence pain we would also approach a dose that would influence motor neuron conduction, decision making, sensory perception, etc. In addition, a higher metabolic rate associated with exercise will increase the oxidation of alcohol in tissue, so the duration of effect would be shorter during exercise, especially considering alcohol is oxidized preferentially over other macros (faster elimination from the blood)

Here's a recent paper on valproic acid I just came across finger:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006899314010245

"Highlights
• The role of HDAC inhibition in alcohol reward was investigated
• Valproic acid (VPA) reduced voluntary ethanol consumption and preference
• VPA has no effect on tastants, saccharin and quinine, intake and preference
• VPA blocked Ethanol-induced conditioned place preference
• VPA reduced HDAC activity in the NAcc but had no effect on blood ethanol metabolism"

As for your question.. no lol. You'd be better off with something else that could reduce pain. Alcohol isn't really robust in its anesthetic effect, it'd take, as cloud/nmu said, enough that would impair you.
Here's a paper looking at caffeine, nicotine, thc, and alcohol: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3878772/
Peep the section under alcohol & performance

we can still partially redeem the proposed theory... we havent yet considered the subjective experience of increased performance

This post was edited by prednam on Aug 12 2014 02:35pm

Thanks balla

there's no increase in performance, just a propose decrease in negative sides of performance. and that pain reduction is at the cost of an actual decrease in performance measures.

plus pain tolerance is easily teachable to the mind, similar to a placebo like effect. if you get to a state where you arent expecting pain to be a factor in your performance, it may not be at all

So ur looking to improve your performance?