I think he meant ban healing potions as in boycotting them. Since NPCs sell healing potions, it's really no use boycotting potions. Personally, I prefer food. It's cheaper and easier to find.
{EDIT} Ah, never mind about that previous paragraph.{/EDIT}
And back to the original topic, mining is an easy way to gain xp and trias in a relatively short time. But the calculations are off. Last I checked, it was 240 trias per gold ore, and it does not take 5 seconds to get one. Even if you do know where the special spots are, eventually your mental stamina will run out, and you'll have to wait until that's back to 100% to start all over again. Maybe with a fast computer mining does take 5 seconds to get the result from "you start digging" to "you were not successful" or "you ahve found gold ore," but with mine it takes at least 15 seconds. Then there's the problem of hauling it to either Hydlaa or Ojaveda to sell (and train skills related to mining), which I think takes longer than usually because your endurance is lower since ore is heavy. (Not sure on this one, will have to check in future.) Also, I find that if two people are mining in the same special spot where there is ore, the chances of finding gold ore goes down. One last thing that's not so good about constantly mining: it's the equivalent of powerleveling.