dissolution rate controlling polymer if used and optionally other pharmaceutically acceptable excipients are blended together in a high shear granulator such as fielder or a fluid bed granulator such as glatt gpcg 5 and granulated to form agglomerates by adding spraying a granulating fluid such as water or alcohol and dried the wet mass can be extruded and spheronized to produce spherical particles beads using an extruder marumerizer in these embodiments the drug load could be as high as 90 by weight based on the total weight of the extruded spheronized core the blend can also be used to produce dry granules by slugging in a tablet press or a chilsonator without the addition of any granulating fluid the active containing cores beads pellets or granular particles thus obtained may be coated with one or two layers of polymers to obtain desired release profiles with or without a lag time the inner layer membrane which largely controls the rate of release following imbibition of water or body fluids into the core comprises a water insoluble polymer such as ethylcellulose at a thickness of from 1 weight up to 6 weight preferably from 1 5 to 4 and most preferably about 2 depending on the solvent or latex suspension based coating formulation used the outer membrane which largely.