How to unload a package without restarting R

I would like to add an alternative solution. This solution does not directly answer your question on unloading a package but, IMHO, provides a cleaner alternative to achieve your desired goal, which I understand, is broadly concerned with avoiding name conflicts and trying different functions, as stated:

mostly because restarting R as I try out different, conflicting packages is getting frustrating, but conceivably this could be used in a program to use one function and then another--although namespace referencing is probably a better idea for that use

Function with_package offered via the withr package offers the possibility to:

attache a package to the search path, executes the code, then removes the package from the search path. The package namespace is not unloaded, however.

library(withr)
with_package("ggplot2", {
  ggplot(mtcars) + geom_point(aes(wt, hp))
})
# Calling geom_point outside withr context
exists("geom_point")
# [1] FALSE

geom_point used in the example is not accessible from the global namespace. I reckon it may be a cleaner way of handling conflicts than loading and unloading packages.