Ethnopharmacology researcher, journalist, adventurer, and former Senior Editor, Executive Editor, and Editor-in-Cheif of High Times magazine. Gorman has spent a great deal of time in Peru, has studied and written extensively about Peruvian ayahuasca healing and San Pedro use, and for a time owned the Cold Beer Blues Bar in Iquitos. During the last years of his life, he lived Texas. Gorman follows drug war politics closely and is widely published on the topic.

Gorman is noted for being the first non-indigenous person to use and write about 'sapo', secretions from the Phyllomedusa bicolor frog that are burned into the skin by the Matses Indians to produce a psychoactive effect. His record of that use opened the door for Western science, with regard to exploring amphibian peptides as possible medicines for human use. He has also worked with the American Museum of Natural History and collected medicinal plants from the remote Yivari river for Shaman Pharmaceuticals.