In the bird community they call it "crisping" it apparently interferes with the extended-release mechanism or rushes it to completion before administration.
Once when I was in the States my doctor was out of town at a conference, the nurse had my immediate-release morphine filled with Oramorph SR, a particularly problematic wasteful and bezoar-forming extended-release formulation, and refused to correct the prescription. She was sacked a month later, but I had to take extraordinary executive measures to avoid potentially lethal withdrawal and incapacitation. This and the discovery I was right about widespread self-medication with opioids, marijuana, stimulants and the rest is what fired up my interest in the "illicit" drug user community and drove my research and passion about harm reduction.
My first exasperated notion was to go mediaeval on the tablets with a hammer and a mortar and pestle. "If I only had a goddamn mace like the Vikings had . . ." I said. I had an audience of about 15 for this and one of them quipped "Not too hard! You're going to rupture the 9-10 oxygen bridge and turn the shit into apomorphine!" Then I went on the internet and article databases and the birdies started singing their song. By the time the night was through I was full of analgesia and love and expansive feelings and relieved but pissed off. I had an old Dow "Better Living Through Chemistry" poster and painting of George Washington Carver framed in my front hallway and gave a thumbs up on my way out the door to pick up some antihistamines.
To be perfectly candid, had not the painful spinal condition supervened in the months after I discovered hydrocodone and potentiation all those years ago, I would probably be either making little rocks into big ones somewhere, droned, or leading an organisation somewhere much larger and intractable, like an opiate version of Pablo Escobar plus Hassan Nasrallah -- Hez-Narcotics or something . . .
