So it's been several months since I've applied this homegrown treatment and I have to say that overall my acne situation has *significantly* improved.
I only did it for about 2 weeks on a not very regular basis of just passing an unfocused 405 beam over the skin quickly. I stopped because it was just too frickin dangerous. The problem is you can't close your eyes cuz you have to see where youre pointing the thing. I guess it's possible to just feel where its being aimed by feeling the heat generated. The problem is the skin is much less precise in its ability to locate where heat is being felt compared to touch for instance. Really, using a laser to do this just isn't a good idea at all.
At first it didn't really improve things much. But in the months since then there has been a consistent absence of new breakouts. The skin on my face basically just looks normal now and there is some scarring from acne from before, but it might as well be freckles. The key is there's no more red inflamed acne. I bet in a year the scarring will be mostly gone.
I have not been bothering to use any of the regular benzoyl peroxide treatment either (which attacks the bacteria by oxygenation).
Of course there could be many other factors which contributed to this result but I suspect the 405nm light did make a difference.
Now I must reiterate for those of you out there who are in the situation I was in who are contemplating doing something like this: Don't risk damaging your eyesight. Ask your doctor, try it with a near-UV flashlight, don't point lasers at your face like I did. I did it in the name of science, I came out fine but I never should have done it in the first place.