Same here. I use the Escape key as Esc in vim and it would probably take me a long time to break that "muscle memory".

As for some recommendations others have had... I have Caps Lock mapped to Ctrl and Ctrl-[ remapped for tmux so those are out.

This is the same across several machines (MBP and multiples ThinkPads) so the more feasible solution for me is to simply stop using the Mac.